Brevan Howard’s flagship digital assets fund suffered a sharp reversal in 2025, sliding nearly 30 per cent as a broad sell-off across cryptocurrencies weighed on one of the hedge fund industry’s most prominent players in the space, according to a report by the Financial Times.
The report cites unnamed people familiar with the performance as revealing that the BH Digital Asset fund, which trades liquid digital currencies alongside venture-style investments in blockchain-related businesses, fell 29.5 per cent last year. The decline marked the fund’s worst annual result since its launch in 2021.
The strategy was launched with backing from Alan Howard, the billionaire co-founder of Brevan Howard, who has been an early and vocal supporter of digital assets. At the start of 2025, Brevan Howard’s digital assets unit managed around $2.4bn, with the bulk of capital allocated to the BH Digital Asset fund.
The setback followed two exceptional years of gains, with the fund returning 43 per cent in 2023 and 52 per cent in 2024. Performance deteriorated sharply last year as cryptocurrencies struggled amid weakness in technology stocks and concerns around artificial intelligence-driven disruption. Bitcoin, the largest digital asset, fell around 6 per cent over the course of 2025 after a powerful rally gave way to a sustained pullback.
The difficult year also coincided with leadership changes. Gautam Sharma, the fund’s chief executive and chief investment officer, departed and was replaced by Chris Rayner-Cook, formerly head of trading and financing at Coinbase.
