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Nikita Fadeev is only four years out of university, but he carries a lot of responsibility. While other 26-year-olds are associates in investment banks, Fadeev is partner and head of Fasanara Digital, a quant crypto hedge fund with $150m of crypto asset under management. He has a team of 13 people, including former employees of Capula Investment Management and BlueCrest, and works from an office in Mayfair and his home in Canary Wharf.
"I am responsible for the investment and strategical direction of the fund," says Fadeev, who studied mathematics at St. Andrews University and is also known for running London's Quant Conference. "When we started Fasanara Digital in 2018, there was very little in place - no strategies, no relationships with trading counterparties and no capital,. It took us a year to put everything in place, create the infrastructure and trading strategies, then we raised external assets and started to expand the team. Over the years, we have become one of the largest players in the space."
Fasanara Digital is part of Fasanara Capital, a hedge fund founded in 2011 by former Merrill Lynch banker Francesco Filia, which has $3.5bn in assets under management. As a student, Fadeev says he initially envisaged himself going into quantitative finance at a bank or hedge fund, but that when the opportunity to launch a crypto fund with an established hedge fund appeared, this aspiration was quickly dropped. "The crypto space is a work in progress. There are many problems from the technological standpoint, but it is rapidly improving and everyone has the same issues so it is a level playing field from that standpoint. Although it is messier than TradFi, it is much more fast-paced and there are more opportunities to make an impact," he says.