Sygnum launches ETH Alpha Fund targeting 8% to 10% annual returns

Sygnum has launched the ETH Alpha Fund SP, a market-neutral fund for professional investors. It targets annual returns of 8% to 10%, net of fees.

The twist is the unit of account. Those returns are measured in ETH, not dollars, so the scoreboard counts coins rather than greenbacks.

For institutions that already plan to hold ether for years, that framing matters. The question stops being “did my portfolio go up in dollars?” and becomes “do I own more ETH than I did in January?”

How the fund plans to stack ETH

The fund blends several yield sources into one product. The base layer is native ETH staking.

On top of staking, Sygnum layers trading strategies. These include options premiums, cross-venue arbitrage, and derivatives carry and funding strategies.

Selling options is like selling insurance: the fund collects a premium upfront and accepts the risk of paying out if prices move sharply.

Cross-venue arbitrage exploits small price gaps between exchanges. If ether trades slightly cheaper on one platform than another, a fund can buy low and sell high almost simultaneously.

Funding and carry trades lean on the perpetual futures market. Traders on leveraged platforms regularly pay each other funding fees, and a hedged fund can position itself to collect those payments.

Research materials on the fund also describe statistical arbitrage and volatility arbitrage within the mix. Both are systematic, model-driven approaches that try to profit from pricing quirks rather than from betting on direction.

Investors still carry full exposure to ether’s price, though. Because every gain and loss lands in ETH, a strong year that adds 10% more coins could still look painful in dollar terms if ether falls hard.

“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

According to the research materials, the fund is set up as a Cayman Islands segregated portfolio company. Sygnum Bank serves as custodian.

The minimum ticket is $100,000, or the ETH equivalent. Liquidity is monthly, with notice periods attached. There is also an investor-level gate of up to 10%, which can limit how much any single investor pulls out at once.

Sygnum has run this play before. Its BTC Alpha Fund launched in October 2025 in partnership with Starboard Digital.

That Bitcoin-denominated vehicle raised over 750 BTC, around $65 million, by late January 2026. It posted an 8.9% annualized return in its first full quarter.

The fund also carries a performance track record since January 2022, showing 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 ranks 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 this means for ETH holders and the market

Market-neutral is not the same as risk-free. Options selling can produce steady income for months and then deliver a nasty loss during a sudden price spike.

Funding-rate strategies have their own sensitivities. They tend to pay best when leverage is running hot and can shrink when trader appetite cools.