Digital asset investment firm Canary Capital has launched a new Axelar private investment fund, giving institutional investors direct access to the interoperability network’s native token, AXL.
According to a Feb. 20 announcement, the Canary AXL Trust will be available to institutional and accredited investors. Currently, Axelar has a market capitalization of more than $444 million and nearly $1 billion in total value locked (TVL), according to Flipside Crypto.
Axelar’s interoperability stack went live in October, allowing decentralized applications to connect with various blockchains, including Solana, Stellar and Sui. Axelar’s technology also allows developers to tokenize real-world assets, including real estate, commodities and intellectual property.
Canary cited Axelar’s major institutional partnerships with Apollo Global Management, JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank as one of the reasons for launching an AXL fund.
“In addition to evaluating top 20 market cap protocols, we are evaluating a handful of top 100 market cap protocols that have strong teams of developers that are building real applications and platforms [and] have the potential, based on developer interest along with launching product, to win in their category and make it to a large market cap,” Canary Capital CEO Steven McClurg told Cointelegraph.
“Axelar qualifies in the category of interoperability,” said McClurg. “There is already demand for AXL among qualified investors.”
Institutional demand for crypto is growing
The launch of Canary’s new trust coincides with a boom in institutional demand for crypto assets. Unlike the closed-ended AXL Trust, Canary is also pursuing open-ended exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with exposure to Solana, Litecoin and XRP.
The applications were submitted following the overwhelming success of the US spot Bitcoin ETFs, which sucked in nearly $40 billion in net assets in 2024. Bitwise’s Matt Hougan believes the US Bitcoin funds could attract more than $50 billion in investor inflows this year.
Increased regulatory clarity in the United States under President Donald Trump is expected to see more institutional uptake of digital assets in the near future, Chainalysis CEO Jonathan Levin told Cointelegraph in January.
Industry executives have also cited President Trump’s executive order banning the creation of a central bank digital currency as a major driver of institutional adoption.
“This move tells you where Trump stands: He’s betting on the existing crypto market rather than creating government-backed digital dollars. It’s a vote of confidence in Bitcoin, Ethereum and others, potentially giving them a boost in legitimacy and market value,” Anndy Lian, an intergovernmental blockchain adviser, told Cointelegraph.
Representatives from the crypto and institutional investment industries recently met with President Trump’s Crypto Task Force to discuss ways to open up the market to more established players. They requested clearer guidelines around exchange-traded products and protocol staking, among others.
Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/canary-capital-launches-institutional-axelar-fund
Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.
Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.
An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.