- Abra is a trading platform that some have labeled the “Robinhood of crypto”.
- Its chief executive, ex-Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Barhydt, spoke to Insider about the firm’s new asset management strategy.
- Abra is offering five crypto funds to high-net-worth individuals looking to invest over $250,000.
Bill Barhydt and Abra have major plans to disrupt the crypto space.
The Silicon Valley-based trading platform, which Barhydt founded in 2015, raised $55 million in Series C funding last year at a $500 million valuation. Retail investors can use Abra to trade over 100 different tokens and earn high yield on certain crypto-assets – which led to Forbes describing the company as the “Robinhood of cryptocurrency“.
But for Baryhdt, those comparisons aren’t quite accurate.
“On the retail side, that description’s fine,” Abra’s chief executive told Insider in a recent interview. “But the institutional investing side of our business is growing so quickly, and we’re really excited about it.”
Insider spoke to Barhydt about his own career trajectory, the recent launch of Abra’s new asset management strategy, and the five funds it’s offering to high-
net-worth
individuals.
Abra Capital Management
Barhydt’s own career took him from NASA in the 1980s to Goldman Sachs and the web browser provider Netscape in the 1990s. In 2012, he delivered the first-ever TED talk on bitcoin – when the token was trading at just $5.
“Over the last decade, I’ve been knee-deep in crypto – first it was bitcoin, and then other tokens,” Baryhdt said. “I started Abra seven years ago, and we’ve built up a crypto banking service and a wealth management program.”
Abra differs from competitors like Binance and Coinbase because it primarily caters to high-net-worth and…
