Sygnum has launched the $ETH Alpha Fund SP, a market-neutral fund for professional investors targeting annual returns of 8% to 10%, net of fees.
The twist is its unit of account: returns are measured in $ETH, not dollars, so the scorecard counts coins rather than greenbacks.
That framing matters for institutions already planning to hold ether for years. The question shifts from “did my portfolio go up in dollars?” to “do I own more $ETH than I did in January?”
How the fund plans to stack $ETH
The fund combines several sources of yield in one product, starting with native $ETH staking.
Sygnum adds trading strategies on top of staking, including options premiums, cross-venue arbitrage, and derivatives carry and funding strategies.
Selling options is like selling insurance: the fund collects a premium upfront while taking on the risk of paying out if prices move sharply.
Cross-venue arbitrage takes advantage of small price differences between exchanges. If ether is slightly cheaper on one platform than another, a fund can buy on the cheaper platform and sell on the other almost simultaneously.
Funding and carry trades rely on the perpetual futures market. Traders on leveraged platforms regularly pay funding fees to one another, and a hedged fund can position itself to collect those payments.
The fund’s research materials also describe statistical arbitrage and volatility arbitrage as part of the mix. Both are systematic, model-driven approaches that seek to profit from pricing quirks rather than directional bets.
Investors still have full exposure to ether’s price. Because all gains and losses are denominated in $ETH, a strong year that adds 10% more coins could still look painful in dollar terms if ether falls sharply.
“Institutions that hold $ETH for the long term increasingly think in $ETH, not dollars, and judge their year by whether they end it holding more,” said Markus Hammerli, head of asset management and $ETH Alpha Fund lead at Sygnum.
The structure and the Bitcoin playbook
The research materials say the fund is structured as a Cayman Islands segregated portfolio company, with Sygnum Bank serving as custodian.
The minimum investment is $100,000, or the equivalent in $ETH. Liquidity is monthly, subject to notice periods. An investor-level gate of up to 10% can also limit how much an individual investor withdraws at once.
Sygnum has used this approach before. Its $BTC Alpha Fund launched in October 2025 in partnership with Starboard Digital.
By late January 2026, the Bitcoin-denominated fund had raised more than 750 $BTC, worth around $65 million. It recorded an 8.9% annualized return in its first full quarter.
The fund also reports a performance track record dating back to January 2022: an annualized return of 18.34%, cumulative returns of 22.57%, annualized volatility of 6.4%, and a Sharpe ratio of 2.21.
Who Sygnum is
Sygnum is among the early digital asset banks, founded around 2017 to 2018. It operates under a Swiss banking license and holds licenses in Singapore and other jurisdictions.
What the fund means for $ETH holders and the market
Market-neutral does not mean risk-free. Selling options can generate steady income for months, then produce a substantial loss during a sudden price spike.
Funding-rate strategies have their own sensitivities. They tend to pay best when leverage is high and can yield less when trader appetite cools.
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