RockawayX acquires Relayer and rebrands it into a long/short liquid opportunities fund
Relayer founder Austin Barack will serve as CIO as the firm targets undervalued tokens and crypto-related equities.
RockawayX has acquired crypto hedge fund Relayer Capital and will rebrand it as the RockawayX Liquid Opportunities Fund as it expands its U.S. presence. The vehicle will target “undervalued liquid tokens and crypto-related equities,” pairing a long/short mandate with a reported $150 million fundraising push.
RockawayX said it acquired crypto hedge fund Relayer Capital to add long and short strategies to its platform and expand its presence in the U.S. The firm described itself as managing roughly $2 billion in assets under management, giving it the balance-sheet and distribution footprint to seed and scale a liquid strategy if it chooses to.
Relayer is being rebranded as the RockawayX Liquid Opportunities Fund, with a mandate focused on identifying “undervalued liquid tokens and crypto-related equities.” That scope matters because it explicitly spans both listed markets and liquid crypto, which tends to pull a portfolio toward relative-value expressions rather than a single-token narrative.
Relayer founder Austin Barack will join RockawayX as chief investment officer of the fund. RockawayX CEO Viktor Fischer framed the timing as favorable for active underwriting, calling it the “right moment for the strategy” and adding: “There are now crypto businesses with real revenues and strong fundamentals that we can underwrite, yet the market is still inefficient and misprices them. That is a great setup for active investors.”
The acquisition announcement landed against a risk-on tape in crypto. Bitcoin fell 1.68% over the prior 24 hours to $79,064 after briefly trading around $81,000 the day before, according to The Block’s BTC price page.
Inside the Strategy: Long/Short, Pair Trades, and the 70% YTD Net Return Claim
RockawayX described the approach in plain hedge-fund mechanics: “The strategy uses long and short positions, including pair trades, to express fundamental views on crypto tokens while reducing broader market exposure when appropriate,” the firm said. In practice, that means the portfolio can run longs in assets it expects to outperform and shorts in assets it expects to lag, with pair trades designed to isolate relative performance rather than simply riding market direction.
The firm also put headline performance numbers on the table. Relayer’s liquid strategy was described as delivering a net return of roughly 70% year-to-date, and as of Aug. 21 it was described as outperforming an equal-weighted basket of bitcoin, ether and solana by 86%.
Those figures are strong enough to function as a fundraising wedge, but the excerpted disclosure leaves key methodology questions unanswered. “Net return” implies after fees and expenses, yet the fee schedule and expense treatment were not provided. The benchmark was described as equal-weighted BTC/ETH/SOL, but the construction details that can swing the comparison — rebalancing frequency, start date, and whether the basket is spot-only — were not specified.
Barack’s comments leaned into a cycle thesis rather than a single catalyst. “I believe we have seen clear signs that crypto markets have bottomed,” he said, adding: “The current setup presents opportunities similar to the emergence from prior bear markets in 2020 and 2023 when we saw major positive price re-ratings.”
Fundraising and Positioning Signals to Monitor in the U.S. Push
The biggest open variable is capital. RockawayX was described as looking to raise $150 million for the vehicle, a figure attributed to a Forbes report citing sources familiar with the matter, and not publicly confirmed in the company’s quoted statement.
For allocators, the missing terms are not cosmetic. The market footprint of a long/short liquid fund is set by liquidity and redemption cadence, gross and net exposure limits, leverage policy, and the practicalities of shorting in crypto, including borrow availability and financing costs. None of those were disclosed in the excerpt, and without them it is hard to handicap whether the strategy is built to run tight, market-neutral books or to swing net exposure when conviction is high.
Two other details will determine whether this becomes a U.S.-relevant flow story or stays a branding exercise. First is timing: whether RockawayX confirms a first close or launch date for the RockawayX Liquid Opportunities Fund. Second is transparency: whether updated performance reporting breaks out the calculation window and benchmark methodology behind the roughly 70% YTD net return and the +86% outperformance claim.
A final positioning tell is whether “crypto-related equities” becomes a real sleeve rather than a line in the mandate. If the fund starts expressing views in listed names alongside token longs and shorts, that is when the strategy stops being purely a crypto beta alternative and starts competing with multi-asset, relative-value books.
My Take: A Bigger Long/Short Bid Meets a Market Still Trading on Beta
The acquisition is being read as a growth story, but the more durable read is capability. RockawayX is buying a process that can express idiosyncratic views through longs, shorts, and pair trades, which is exactly what you want when the tape stops rewarding broad exposure and starts punishing crowded beta.
The threshold that matters is whether the reported $150 million raise becomes a confirmed, timed capital event with disclosed risk limits and liquidity terms. If that happens, the setup starts to look structural rather than narrative-driven, because a scaled long/short allocator spanning tokens and crypto-related equities can push dispersion and relative-value flows even when the market is not trending.
