June 17: Nickel Digital Asset Management (“Nickel”), Europe’s leading digital assets hedge fund manager, founded by alumni of Bankers Trust, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, has outlined its vision of best practice for pod shops in the digital asset space.
Its model is focused on reducing fixed-cost drag and strengthening alignment and trust with pods anchored in higher performance fees, but with a holdback to absorb some degree of potential future drawdowns. This First Loss Deferred (FLD) capital creates a tangible alignment of incentives and avoids the asymmetric manager payout structure.
Many of the managers come out of top-tier trading environments, ranging from established TradFi hedge funds and proprietary trading firms, to highly specialised crypto-native desks, combined with strong academic pedigrees in disciplines such as mathematics, physics, engineering and computer science. The blend of rigorous analytical training and real-world trading experience is fundamental to Nickel’s systematic, research-driven approach.
Traditional pod shop models have often been criticised for fixed-cost drag – the burden of high management fees and sign-on bonuses that dilute returns. Nickel’s model deliberately strips away these elements, replacing them with a system built on institutional-grade rigour and genuine performance-led growth.
In a fragmented and volatile digital asset market, Nickel believes that the hero trader model is no longer sufficient. To capture alpha across global venues, the firm exclusively funds fully systematic strategies where every stage from signal generation to execution is driven by code.
A cornerstone of Nickel’s best practice approach is its commitment to manager autonomy and intellectual property (IP) protection. Unlike many platforms that seek to internalise signals or harvest successful strategies, Nickel’s pods remain independent by design.
Nickel’s operational excellence is underpinned by RiskZeus, its proprietary system capturing over 100 million tick-by-tick data points every 24 hours across roughly 10,000 open positions. This technology was proven during the October 10th Flash Crash last year which saw the largest liquidation event in digital asset history, with $20 billion wiped out. While many faced collapse, Nickel’s fund protected capital and delivered one of its strongest daily returns, maintaining annualised volatility below 7%.
Counterparty and custody risk management remain central to the platform with 94% of exposure managed via Off-Exchange Settlement (OES) solutions as of February 2026. This ensures investor assets remain secure with specialised crypto custodians like Copper and regulated banks like Sygnum acting as the custody providers.
As of early 2026, Nickel’s trading bench includes 80 pods across 35 cities and six continents, with aggregate trading volumes exceeding $100 billion in 2025.
Anatoly Crachilov, CEO and Founding Partner at Nickel Digital, explains that the platform’s success is rooted in its ability to act as a bridge between exceptional global talent and institutional capital. “The next generation of multi-manager investing in digital assets will not be built around in-house star traders and balance-sheet-heavy platforms.” says Crachilov. “It will be built around institutional access to globally-located scarce systematic trading talent, protected intellectual property, and a powerful risk control infrastructure running on 24/7 basis.
Alek Kloda, Co-CIO and Founding Partner at Nickel Digital, believes that the shift toward tokenisation demands a new level of technological agility. “As digital assets mature, the velocity of market opportunities requires a 24/7, code-driven approach to both execution and risk management,” notes Kloda. “Our model empowers independent pods to act swiftly while ensuring that global risk controls are uniformly applied, bridging the gap between low-latency crypto trading and institutional safety,” he commented.
Michael Hall, Co-CIO and Founding Partner at Nickel Digital, notes that the strength of Nickel Digital’s platform lies in its marriage of flexibility for the trader and discipline for the investor. “By ensuring our trading partners retain ownership of their IP, we attract the best talent, while our centralized risk architecture ensures that this creative freedom operates within strict, pre-defined parameters. This balance is crucial for achieving high Sharpe ratio strategies in a volatile market environment,” he adds.
“We are defining the next generation of asset management, where institutional rigour meets digital agility,” concludes Crachilov. “Our commitment is to continue providing superior risk-adjusted returns for our investors, regardless of market direction.”
