Tuur Demeester's bitcoin alpha fund Adamant Capital has quietly shut down

Longtime bitcoin proponent Tuur Demeester's bitcoin alpha fund Adamant Capital has quietly shut down, The Block has learned.

Michiel Lescrauwaet, co-founder of Adamant Capital and now managing director of crypto-focused venture capital fund Tioga Capital, confirmed the news, telling The Block that Demeester closed the fund in November 2019 for "personal & family reasons."

Last month, Demeester posted a video on YouTube, saying that he is "slightly shifting away" from the bitcoin world to focus on "natural interests," including philosophy and global issues such as inflation and social unrest.

"I'm working on some writing projects. There's one on philosophy, basically the philosophy of freedom," Demeester said in the video. "I'm also working on a writing project on [late American singer-songwriter and musician] Kurt Cobain, which is more like biographical."

Demeester added that the two projects are long-term and may take the form of a book. As for bitcoin, Demeester thinks it is "growing up" and is "getting onto its own."

"I feel like there's a lot of great people out there, and I feel less urgent about like I need to add my voice," said Demeester.

Moreover, Demeester thinks that bitcoin will become more frequently discussed in the political arena. "It's going to become this political hot potato," he said, adding that he doesn't really like political debates.

"I think I'm gonna be focusing more on what I perceive as longer-term stuff like the philosophy work that I'm doing, you know, do things that I both enjoy and I think are valuable," Demeester concluded.

Fund performance

Demeester got involved in the crypto space in 2012 when he recommended bitcoin as an investment in his newsletter "Macro Trends." At the time, bitcoin was worth $5. Today, it is trading at around $11,800. Demeester then went on to set up Adamant Capital in 2017 to create a fund to outperform bitcoin.

That goal couldn't continue. Lescrauwaet told The Block that Adamant Capital's fund was down by around 0.2% in BTC terms and "slightly up" in USD terms when he left the fund last September.

After September, the fund probably lost up to 2% in BTC terms, according to Lescrauwaet, who said he doesn't know exact numbers. Demeester did not return The Block's requests for comment.

The fund's advisors were Blockstream CEO Adam Back, former LedgerX executive and now Avanti Bank CTO Bryan Bishop and bitcoin developer Tamás Blummer, who passed away earlier this year. Back and Bishop didn't return The Block's requests for comment.

Notably, Adamant Capital removed the "team" page from its website, where the advisors were mentioned, after The Block reached out to Back and Bishop, as well as its former "part-time" COO and CFO Daniel Schwarz, on August 4.

AUM

Adamant Capital managed assets of around $10 million when it closed in November, Lescrauwaet told The Block. According to regulatory filings submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Adamant Capital managed two funds — Adamant Fund I and Adamant Offshore Fund I. The former fund sought to raise money with a minimum investment being $100,000 per investor, but couldn't raise any amount, according to a 2018 SEC filing. The other fund could only raise $218,897, the minimum investment per investor, according to a 2019 SEC filing.

Adamant Capital withdrew its registration with the SEC in March of this year and stopped submitting regulatory filings.

It is not clear who were the investors in Adamant Capital. Lescrauwaet declined to disclose any names, but said the fund had "very notable investors."

"The biggest Adamant investor followed me to Tioga," said Lescrauwaet. Tioga is closing its first round of €10 million (~$11.7 million) "soon" and will scale up to €50 million (~$59 million) later, said Lescrauwaet.

As previously reported, several crypto hedge funds have closed their doors in recent months, including Tetras Capital, Adaptive Capital, Prime Factor Capital and Neural Capital.