ABOUT
Arete Capital is a research-led digital asset hybrid fund focused on capturing asymmetric return opportunities in the early-stage private and liquid public markets. Founded by experienced partners with complementary backgrounds across digital asset and institutional financial markets.
We apply our in-house fundamental research and a disciplined risk methodology to construct a balanced portfolio of high conviction primary market allocations, where we provide an extensive multidisciplinary value add to the teams we underwrite, with a concentrated liquid exposure to discounted market-leading protocols poised for growth from secular tailwinds.
McKenna, Founding Partner
McKenna is a founding partner of Arete Capital leading the firm’s investment theses who has spent the last 6 years researching and investing in emerging digital assets leveraging his technical expertise and experience operating in public markets. Previously McKenna was as analyst for ROK Capital a multi-strategy hedge fund based out of South Korea leading the firms research efforts. McKenna earned a MSc in Computer Science in 2018/19 where his dissertation focused on the scalability trilemma aswell as investigating alternative scaling solutions such as generalisable state channels and zero-knowledge cryptography.
Ilya, Founding Partner
Ilya is a founding partner at Arete Capital focusing on firm’s DeFi/RWA investment thesis and leading fund operations. With over a decade of institutional investment management experience at Arian Lee & Partners ($20bn AUM) and M&A expertise from Perella Weinberg Partners, Ilya brings deep knowledge to portfolio and risk management across digital and traditional markets. As an ex-lead portfolio manager of a $20m market-neutral CeFi/DeFi fund (OX1), he also advises on institutional DeFi strategies, leveraging his extensive background in TradFi, Fintech, and Web3 operations. Ilya earned a MSc in Economics from Trinity College Dublin in 2010, receiving a Foundation Scholarship.
