Man Group close to launching crypto hedge fund despite FTX collapse: Bloomberg

Man Group, the biggest publicly traded hedge fund firm, is reportedly close to starting a crypto hedge fund.

The crypto hedge fund strategy has been in development for several months, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified.

Man Group’s AHL trading division plans to start the fund as soon as the end of this year, the people said.

The crypto fund beginning operations is contingent on its assessment of counterparty risks, one of the people told Bloomberg. The effort is being led by money manager Andre Rzym. Man Group’s AHL already trades cryptocurrency futures.

This announcement comes amid the unraveling of crypto exchange FTX, one of the most significant crypto market events in recent years.

Centralized entities are seeing the most collateral damage from FTX. Several prominent lenders and crypto yield programs have suspended withdrawals this past week, and billions of dollars of user funds have been lost. FTX declared bankruptcy last week.