Having established a presence in Monaco in 2025, Abraxas Capital Management is positioning the Principality at the heart of its next phase of development. Fabio Frontini, CEO, and Antonio Bozzo, Head of Growth, discuss the firm’s institutional approach to digital assets, its emphasis on risk management and market-neutral strategies, and the opportunities it sees emerging as the asset class matures.
Abraxas Capital Management has been active in asset management for almost 25 years and currently manages approximately $4 billion in assets. After Covid, we began looking for a stable European jurisdiction in which to establish a strong presence for our digital-asset business.
Monaco stood out for several reasons. Stability was clearly paramount, both from a governmental and legislative perspective. The Principality also offers something that is increasingly valuable in a complex regulatory environment: proximity and the possibility of engaging directly and constructively with the authorities. Having operated in regulated environments including London and Malta, we were looking not simply for a solid framework, but for a jurisdiction in which an innovative business model could be understood and developed.
We explored Monaco for several years before deciding to establish a branch. Our discussions with the local regulatory authorities gave us confidence that the Principality was open to our project and had a broader ambition to strengthen its position as a financial centre capable of attracting new expertise and talent. Our approval was granted in 2025.
Since then, we have chosen to reinforce our presence here. We are developing our local organisation, investing in our Monaco office and recruiting locally. The Principality is therefore not a satellite operation for us but a critical part of our international footprint alongside London, both now and in the future.
There is also a strategic fit. Monaco has a sophisticated wealth-management ecosystem, while institutional expertise in digital assets remains relatively scarce. Our ambition is to become a reference point in the Principality for investors and financial institutions seeking to approach this asset class through a regulated, institutional framework.
Digital assets have evolved into a genuine asset class, provided they are approached with the same standards that institutional investors expect in traditional finance.
When Abraxas fully pivoted its strategic focus from traditional asset management into digital assets in 2018, our approach was not to abandon the disciplines of traditional finance, but to transfer them to a new market. That meant institutional-grade risk management, robust operational processes, appropriate custody arrangements and infrastructure, and investment vehicles designed to give investors a framework they could understand and trust.
The misconception is to view digital assets solely through the question of whether Bitcoin or another token will rise or fall. Directional exposure is only one part of the market. Digital assets also support strategies familiar to traditional finance – arbitrage, basis trading, lending and borrowing, among others. These strategies can seek to generate alpha independently of the direction of the underlying market.
This is precisely where institutionalisation matters. Sophisticated investors do not simply need access to an asset; they need a credible investment manager with robust custody arrangements, disciplined risk management and an operational architecture consistent with their own requirements. Our role is to provide that institutional bridge into the digital-asset ecosystem.
For Monaco’s financial institutions in particular, having such expertise physically present in the Principality can make the asset class easier to assess. Due diligence, dialogue and understanding are fundamentally different when investors can interact directly with a regulated specialist rather than approaching the market at a distance.
The volatility, fragmentation and speed of evolution of digital-asset markets do not reduce the need for risk management; they make it even more important.
Our philosophy is therefore built around institutional-grade infrastructure: risk controls, IT systems, custody arrangements, counterparty oversight, and operational processes. The objective is to distinguish exposure to the digital-asset ecosystem from a simple directional bet on market prices.
That principle is at the heart of Abraxas. Our flagship Elysium Global Arbitrage strategy -launched in 2018 under Maltese regulation- is fully market neutral and designed to extract alpha from the digital-asset ecosystem without taking directional market risk. In other words, the investment thesis does not depend on Bitcoin or Ethereum rising in price.
Alongside this absolute return strategy, we have also developed solutions for investors who do want exposure to the underlying assets. These combine beta exposure – for example to Bitcoin, Ethereum or gold – with market-neutral strategies to generate additional returns on the underlying holding.
The distinction is important. An investor taking direct exposure to Bitcoin accepts its full market directionality. A structure that seeks to generate additional returns alongside that exposure changes the economics of the position over time, although it does not remove the underlying market risk. For institutional investors, the essential point is that digital assets can be managed through a range of strategies with different risk profiles, rather than being treated as a single speculative trade.
At the same time, directional – or beta – exposure will continue to have a role for investors who wish to take a view on Bitcoin, Ethereum or gold. Our approach is to place that exposure within an institutional framework and, where possible, complement it with strategies that seek to generate additional returns. This can improve the economics of holding the underlying asset, although naturally it does not eliminate its price risk.
Regarding the future of the ecosystem, one area we are monitoring is credit. Credit is one of the largest components of traditional financial markets, yet it remains comparatively underdeveloped in the digital-asset markets. We expect new forms of credit products and financing solutions to emerge across the wider market over the coming years.
The underlying technology is also important. Blockchain enables rapid peer-to-peer transactions and provides an auditable record of movements. We believe it will be increasingly relevant to the development of financial-market infrastructure. The significance for us lies in how these developments reshape market structure and create investment opportunities.
The next phase of the market will therefore be about more than digital-asset prices. It will be about infrastructure, institutional adoption, regulation, credit, custody and the broader integration of blockchain-based assets into financial markets. Abraxas intends to continue operating at that intersection between financial discipline and innovation.
