Brevan Howard is a well-established global alternative investment management platform. The company started off as a macro hedge fund back in 2002, but more recently the firm started to specialize in crypto.
Brevan Howard’s investment approach combines directional, relative value and derivative trading strategies. However, this year the company’s funds have not performed as hoped. Bloomberg reported earlier in April that the $11.4 billion Brevan Master Fund has reduced its performance fees by 33%. It’s also offering clients reduced management fees. Why? Because the firm needs to lock in capital for longer. The fund has under-performed in 2025 so far losing 5.8% since the turn of the year.
Another of Bevan Howard’s funds — Alpha Strategies — was up 1.5% during the first quarter, while the Emerging Markets fund made 4%.
This story came on the back of news that Brevan Howard was cutting 7 percent of Hedge Fund Trading Staff globally in January. All in all, a very underwhelming start to the year.
Performance is Down, but Crypto and DeFi Offer Hope
Brevan Howard’s crypto business is called ‘BH Digital’ and is officially called the Crypto & Digital Asset Division. It has a diversified multi-strategy approach to access investment and trading opportunities across the evolving digital asset ecosystem. The company even lists 15 blockchain engineers as working at its crypto division, something that is almost unheard of in the hedge fund space.
Last year the firm’s digital assets unit was reported to be up 52 percent. Brevan Howard has not made any secret of its desire to be the leading asset manager for institutional investors in digital assets. But with revenue down in 2025, it has a lot of work to match last year’s results.
BH Digital invests in liquid coins such as bitcoin but also options, derivatives, and private stakes in startups.
Last year Brevan Howard moved forward with several key relationships within the digital assets’ ecosystem. One of these was with Aptos, a key player in DeFi space.
How Brevan Howard is Embracing Tokenization
It’s not just BH Digital that should be of interest to investors today. The Brevan Howard Master Fund was tokenized last year, in another step towards embracing tokenization.
It’s this year that things became even more interesting.
In April Standard Chartered released a story on its site. It was about how the leading financial institution had launched a collateral mirroring programme, enabling institutional clients to utilise cryptocurrencies and tokenised money market funds as off-exchange collateral for trading. Brevan Howard was one of the first few institutions to onboard onto the programme.
In the story Ryan Taylor, Group Head of Compliance at Brevan Howard and CAO of BH Digital commented that “this programme is the latest example of the continued innovation and institutionalisation of the industry. As a significant investor in the digital assets space, we are thrilled to partner with industry leaders to further grow and evolve the crypto ecosystem globally.”
Using its base in the crypto-friendly Abu Dhabi with the support of Standard Chartered, Brevan Howard can outmanoeuvre competitors like JP Morgan.
Looking at the size of the fund tokenized ($4 billion) and adding to that the $2.4 billion that BH Digital has under management, there is a clear direction of travel here.
Additionally, the collaboration with Aptos and investments into crypto native businesses like Plume, Kinto, or Libre, give investors comfort that the firm is leading where others are merely following.
Can the BH Digital fund have another good year this year as it did during the first six months of 2024? If it does it will show that a Brevan Howard is able to outsmart Wall Street.
Author: Andy Samu
#Tokenization #DigitalAssets #BrevanHoward #StanChart #Aptos #Blockchain #Crypto
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