Rockawayx Buys Relayer Capital, Names Liquid Opportunities Fund

Rockawayx has acquired digital asset hedge fund Relayer Capital and will rename it the Rockawayx Liquid Opportunities Fund. Relayer founder Austin Barack will serve as chief investment officer and continue to run the fund’s long-short trading strategy. The fund is open to new outside investors.

The acquisition adds a directional, liquid-markets strategy to Rockawayx’s roughly $2 billion investment platform and complements its existing venture and market-neutral businesses. The deal also strengthens Rockawayx’s U.S. presence, with Barack based in the New York area.

The renamed fund will take long and short positions in liquid crypto tokens and in equities tied to digital-asset businesses. Its mandate centers on finding assets that appear mispriced relative to underlying revenues, market position or growth prospects. The strategy can use pair trades and short positions to express relative-value views while limiting exposure to broad crypto market swings.

Rockawayx reported that Relayer’s strategy produced an estimated net return of about 70% this year through Aug. 21, outperforming an equal-weighted basket of bitcoin, ether and solana by 86 percentage points. Rockawayx cited positions in Venice AI, Hyperliquid, Grass Network, Pump.fun and Zcash as major contributors to the performance.

The fund will concentrate on two themes: artificial intelligence applications within crypto and the expansion of round-the-clock markets for tokenized real-world assets.

Austin Barack, founder of Relayer, called current valuations ‘similar to opportunities that appeared after prior downturns,’ adding the fund focuses on ‘growth, value, and category leaders with durable market share.’

Viktor Fischer, Rockawayx chief executive, described the opportunity as linked to more conventional financial profiles emerging at some crypto companies. He added: ‘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.’

Rockawayx also operates infrastructure and onchain liquidity divisions the firm says can help investment teams source ideas and assist portfolio companies from early funding through token launches and public-market trading. The acquisition provides institutional clients with another way to access crypto exposure within a single platform that now includes venture, market-neutral and liquid strategies.