Hashed anchors $300 million private credit fund for crypto firms

Crypto venture firm Hashed is the anchor investor in a new $300 million private credit fund that will lend U.S. dollars to digital asset companies based on their financials rather than their collateral. Managed by Abu Dhabi-based Thoro Capital Management, it is a structure that has been almost absent from crypto lending since the 2022 blowups.

• Thoro will underwrite borrowers on cash flow, financials and management with loan covenants, not overcollateralization and margin calls.
• Loans are denominated in dollars and settled in stablecoins, aimed at exchanges, custodians, market makers and infrastructure firms with audited financials.
• Hashed’s case: bank capital rules and collateral-only crypto lenders have left profitable, audited companies dependent on expensive short-term debt.

• $300M target size for the Thoro Capital fund, announced Monday (September 22)
• $14B+ cumulative on-chain private credit loans, the largest real-world asset category
• $3T+ size of the traditional private credit market the fund is borrowing its model from
• Undisclosed Hashed’s anchor commitment, which will set the tone for the first close

The fund is targeting $300 million, The Block reported Monday (September 22). It was initiated by Mohamed Hamdy, Thoro’s managing partner and a co-founder of Further Ventures. Loans will be denominated in dollars and settled in stablecoins. Hashed’s anchor commitment was not disclosed.

The fund underwrites the business, not the tokens

Almost all lending to crypto firms today is overcollateralized. A borrower posts bitcoin or ether worth more than the loan, and the lender’s risk is the price of the collateral, not the health of the company. That model survived 2022 precisely because it ignores the borrower, but it leaves well-run companies paying for short-term, collateral-heavy debt they should not need.

Thoro is taking the opposite approach. Loans will carry covenants, the standard tool in traditional private credit, rather than margin calls.

“Instead of lending purely against collateral, we assess the borrower as an operating business, looking at its financials, cash flow and management.”

Thoro Capital Management, via The Block

The target borrowers are digital asset institutions and infrastructure companies with audited financials: exchanges, custodians, market makers, mining operators and the service providers around them.

Hashed says banks and crypto lenders have left a gap

Hashed’s case for anchoring the fund is a structural one. Regulated banks face capital charges on crypto exposure that make lending to the sector uneconomic. Crypto-native lenders rely on asset collateral. The result, Hashed said, is that profitable, audited infrastructure companies are dependent on expensive short-term collateralized borrowing, according to PANews.

The firm has been positioning for this in Abu Dhabi. Hashed recently received financial services permission from Abu Dhabi Global Market and signed a memorandum of understanding with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office to support South Korean institutions expanding into the UAE, The Block reported. Thoro is based in the same jurisdiction.

Tokenized private credit is the largest on-chain RWA category

The fund arrives as on-chain private credit has grown into the largest real-world asset category by cumulative loans, at more than $14 billion, against a traditional private credit market of more than $3 trillion. Most of that on-chain volume is still collateralized or receivables-backed. A covenant-based fund lending to crypto operating companies is a different product, closer to a middle-market direct lending fund than to a DeFi protocol.

It is also a bet that the sector’s balance sheets are now auditable enough to underwrite. Three years ago, that would have been a hard case to make.

The BlockWest read. We see this as the clearest attempt yet to give crypto infrastructure companies the kind of debt venture lenders have given software companies for two decades: priced on cash flow, not on token volatility. If Thoro can deploy $300 million on covenants without a default cycle, it will pull traditional private credit managers into the space far faster than any tokenization pilot has. That is the real prize, not the fund itself.

The number that matters is the first close, and whether it comes from crypto-native capital or from traditional private credit allocators. The second is who borrows. If the early loans go to exchanges and market makers with public audits, the model works. If they go to companies that could not get collateralized credit elsewhere, it does not. Hashed’s anchor commitment, still undisclosed, will show how much of the $300 million is real.

Reporting from The Block and PANews contributed to this article.

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