Bitwise Asset Management, known for managing crypto index funds, raises $70M Series B co-led by Elad Gil and Electric Capital and says it's now valued at $500M+
Context & Ripple Effects
This round continues a pattern in which traditional-finance names keep underwriting crypto's plumbing and packaging. In 2018, BitGo's Goldman- and Novogratz-backed wallet raise signaled institutions buying crypto infrastructure directly; by 2022, Elwood Technologies' institutional market-access Series A had Goldman leading again. Bitwise sits one layer up the stack: instead of wallets or trading rails, it sells allocators pre-packaged index exposure.
First-order effects
- Bitwise gets $70M and a $500M+ mark to scale its crypto index fund business, with two co-leads bringing complementary assets: Electric Capital's crypto-native developer research and Elad Gil's portfolio, which already includes Coinbase.
- The round prices a pure fund-management business at half a billion dollars, a benchmark other crypto asset managers must now match or explain against when they go out to raise.
Second-order effects
- Elad Gil's reported ~$1.5 billion solo-GP fundraise means check sizes like this one come from a widening pool of concentrated personal capital, raising the competitive bar for multi-stage firms bidding on crypto deals.
- Institutional-access providers such as Elwood and fund packagers such as Bitwise end up competing for the same allocator mandate, pushing both to bundle execution and product rather than sell them separately.
Third-order effects
- Electric Capital's own survey work shows global crypto developer counts contracting year-over-year while capital flows into distribution products like index funds — if that divergence holds, industry value consolidates around firms that repackage crypto for allocators rather than around new protocol development.
- A sustained pattern of crossover investors anchoring crypto rounds would push regulators' attention from tokens themselves toward the fund wrappers, since the investable object becomes a managed product sold to mainstream buyers.
The trend: Crypto capital is migrating from direct token bets toward institutionally packaged vehicles — index funds, trading rails, custody — with crossover investors like Elad Gil and Electric Capital setting the terms.