SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Bitwise Asset Management today announced the acquisition of Attestant Limited, an institutional-grade Ethereum staking provider with $3.7 billion in staked assets. The acquisition expands Bitwise’s suite of solutions for investors to include professional non-custodial staking alongside ETPs, hedge fund solutions, private funds, and separately managed account strategies.
Over the last five years, the team of technologists and financial services veterans at Attestant has earned the trust of a wide variety of institutional clients, including family offices, high-net-worth individuals, funds, traditional financial institutions, exchanges, custodians, protocol foundations, and decentralized finance protocols. The firm’s services are known for combining technical excellence with robust reporting for tax, audit, and compliance.
Going forward, there will be no disruption to Attestant’s services. The team and products will be rebranded to form Bitwise’s new Onchain Solutions group (“Bitwise OS”). Bitwise OS will focus on improving the group’s existing Ethereum services, building staking services for select additional protocols, and continuing to contribute to the open-source community. Initially, staking services through Bitwise Onchain Solutions will be available with a minimum stake of $10 million.
“We want Bitwise to be the best possible partner to investors in the crypto space,” said Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley. “This acquisition allows us to expand the ways we can help investors meet their objectives. The Attestant team and product are best-in-class, and we’re excited to build on this solution for clients.”
“The Attestant team has built a truly best-of-breed staking solution for Ethereum, one that goes above and beyond technically to give clients high performance and peace of mind,” said Bitwise Chief Technology Officer Hong Kim. “Beyond that, we love that they have authored important open-source projects like Dirk and Vouch, along with collaborating on important research projects in the space. That’s the Bitwise way.”
“Many on our team at Attestant have backgrounds managing money and building institutional-grade technology infrastructure at large banks and financial institutions,” said Attestant CEO and co-founder Dr. Sreejith Das, PhD. “We started Attestant in 2019 out of deep conviction that Ethereum and public blockchains are the future, and our DNA of capital preservation, compliance, and reporting has always remained core to what we’ve built. As we got to know Bitwise, we found a firm with those same values and found ourselves excited by the opportunity to do even more for clients as part of a larger firm.”
The core Attestant team will join Bitwise, including co-founders Das, Jim McDonald, and Dr. Steve Berryman, PhD, who bring decades of experience and exceptional reputations in finance and technology. With the deal, Bitwise now has more than 90 employees across the United States and Europe.
Galaxy Digital Partners LLC served as exclusive financial advisor to Attestant for this acquisition.
About Bitwise
Bitwise Asset Management is a leading crypto specialist asset manager serving clients in the U.S. and Europe. Thousands of financial advisors, family offices, and institutional investors partner with Bitwise to understand and access the opportunities in crypto. For seven years, Bitwise has established a track record of excellence managing a broad suite of index and active solutions across ETFs, separately managed accounts, private funds, hedge fund strategies, and staking. The company is known for providing unparalleled client support through expert research and commentary, its nationwide client team of crypto specialists, and its deep access to the crypto ecosystem. The Bitwise team combines expertise in technology and asset management with backgrounds including BlackRock, Millennium, ETF.com, Meta, Google, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Bitwise is backed by leading institutional investors and has been profiled in Institutional Investor, Barron’s, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal. It has offices in San Francisco, New York, and London.
About Attestant
Attestant is dedicated to providing institutional-grade staking solutions. It was formed by a team with decades of experience at the highest levels of technology, risk, and financial management. Attestant designed its staking infrastructure from the ground up to ensure resilience and security, with multiple overlapping levels of software and hardware redundancy, leveraging the team’s experience building mission-critical systems for the banking industry. The company is known for its technical excellence and dedication to supporting the staking community, having built open-source staking tools and products that are widely used throughout the industry. Attestant is one of the longest-running Ethereum-staking companies in the world with an excellent track record of performance and client-focused service.
Risks and Important Information
No Advice on Investment; Risk of Loss: Prior to making any investment decision, each investor must undertake its own independent examination and investigation, including the merits and risks involved in an investment, and must base its investment decision—including a determination whether the investment would be a suitable investment for the investor—on such examination and investigation.
Crypto assets are digital representations of value that function as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, or a store of value, but they do not have legal tender status. Crypto assets are sometimes exchanged for U.S. dollars or other currencies around the world, but they are not currently backed nor supported by any government or central bank. Their value is completely derived by market forces of supply and demand, and they are more volatile than traditional currencies, stocks, or bonds.
Trading in crypto assets comes with significant risks, including volatile market price swings or flash crashes, market manipulation, and cybersecurity risks and risk of losing principal or all of your investment. In addition, crypto asset markets and exchanges are not regulated with the same controls or customer protections available in equity, option, futures, or foreign exchange investing.
Crypto asset trading requires knowledge of crypto asset markets. In attempting to profit through crypto asset trading, you must compete with traders worldwide. You should have appropriate knowledge and experience before engaging in substantial crypto asset trading. Crypto asset trading can lead to large and immediate financial losses. Under certain market conditions, you may find it difficult or impossible to liquidate a position quickly at a reasonable price.
The opinions expressed represent an assessment of the market environment at a specific time and are not intended to be a forecast of future events, or a guarantee of future results, and are subject to further discussion, completion and amendment. The information herein is not intended to provide, and should not be relied upon for, accounting, legal or tax advice, or investment recommendations. You should consult your accounting, legal, tax or other advisors about the matters discussed herein.