Gate News announcement, on April 7, Zaheer Ebtikar, founder of the crypto hedge fund Split Capital, announced the fund’s closure and officially joined stablecoin startup Plasma as Chief Strategy Officer. Ebtikar said that the fund’s shutdown was not due to poor performance, but because he believes crypto hedge funds as a business model are no longer viable. Ebtikar pointed out that digital asset ETFs launched by traditional financial institutions such as BlackRock and Fidelity allow institutional investors to allocate crypto assets directly through compliant channels, leading to a sharp decline in demand for crypto hedge funds. Meanwhile, the crypto venture capital space has also faced large-scale retrenchment; the prices of major crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, which were near the 2025 historical highs, have fallen by nearly 50%.