October 2025
October was a split month for Alpha Node Capital. Alpha Prime Trust delivered a positive return of 0.96%, supported by solid results in the market-neutral and FX momentum strategies. The Digital Fund fell 5.31%, as broad weakness in crypto offset gains from core positions such as Monero and Binance Coin.
The month remained supportive for risk assets in traditional finance, with major US equity indices posting gains. Digital assets, by contrast, had a broadly negative month. Bitcoin and Ethereum retreated while equities advanced, so digital assets effectively decoupled to the downside over the period.
The weakest areas were the more volatile parts of DeFi, most exposed to leverage and yield-seeking behaviour. Liquid-staking and decentralised exchange tokens led the drawdowns, while lending protocols held up relatively better. At the same time, US-listed spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs continued to attract net inflows, and the US Securities and Exchange Commission signalled that it intends to move ahead with an “innovation exemption” regime to give selected projects more regulatory clarity. A streamlined SEC process also allowed the first US spot ETFs linked to Litecoin, Hedera and Solana to launch despite a federal government shutdown.
Privacy-focused assets and a small group of larger platform tokens outperformed, while AI-linked tokens and smaller smart-contract platforms lagged materially.
Alpha Prime Trust
Alpha Prime Trust performed positively at 0.96% gain in October. The strongest contributor was market neutral strategy with a 2.31% gain, followed by the momentum foreign-exchange sleeve at 1.48% and the DeFi strategy at 0.79%. These gains more than offset the loss in the arbitrage sleeve, which operated in a difficult liquidity and volatility setting.
The market-neutral strategy benefitted from elevated dispersion between major and mid-cap tokens. Macro and regulatory headlines continued to drive frequent rotations between themes, which created opportunities at the single-asset level. At the same time, steady flows into US-listed Bitcoin and Ether ETFs helped keep futures curves and funding markets reasonably well behaved even as spot prices drifted lower. Mean-reversion pairs, spot–futures basis trades and relative-value positions between ETFs and underlying markets all contributed to the 2.31% gain in this strategy.
The arbitrage strategy, by contrast, declined 3.18% (on notional account value) and was the main detractor at the trust level. The same volatility that suited market-neutral trading proved more challenging for cross-venue arbitrage. Futures markets saw sharp price gaps on decentralised exchanges, thin order books on smaller venues and fast reversals around macro headlines. In that environment, spreads between venues did not always normalise in
a predictable way. A number of positions initiated to capture price dislocations instead experienced widening spreads before convergence, leading to realised losses despite tight controls on gross exposure. Position sizing and risk limits ensured that the overall impact was contained, but the options arbitrage was nevertheless the largest single drag on Alpha Prime Trust performance in October.
Digital Fund
The Digital Fund returned -5.31% in October. Bitcoin fell 2.59% over the month, finishing at 110,180 US dollars, while Ethereum declined 6.28% to close at 3,860.62 US dollars. External market data, which show mid-single-digit to high-single-digit declines for Bitcoin and Ether over the period, confirm that the fund’s core holdings moved broadly in line with the majors.
The Australian dollar weakened slightly against the US dollar, with the end-of-month AUD/USD rate moving from about 0.6589 at the end of September to roughly 0.6540 at the end of October. This depreciation reduced the impact of US-dollar price falls when translated back into Australian dollars, but not enough to counter the underlying drawdown in digital assets.
Monero and Binance Coin were the main positive contributors. Monero rose 11.87% to 327.54 US dollars. Its performance reflected both project-specific progress and renewed interest in privacy-focused assets. Monero completed its Fluorine Fermi upgrade, which strengthened node selection and transaction privacy. This reinforced its position as a leading privacy network at a time when some investors were rotating away from crowded AI narratives and seeking diversification in the privacy segment, including names such as Monero and Zcash. Binance Coin gained 8.70%, ending the month at 1,084.74 US dollars. BNB was supported by improving fundamentals on BNB Chain, including rising active addresses, higher transaction throughput and stronger fee capture. News that Kyrgyzstan would launch a national stablecoin and central-bank digital currency on BNB Chain and establish a national crypto reserve including BNB added to the positive tone. Later in the month, the high-profile pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao by the US administration reinforced expectations that Binance and its ecosystem will remain a core part of global digital-asset infrastructure, which further supported sentiment towards BNB.
A comparative appears to have ceased during the month which highlights the challenges of balanced portfolio in the sector. We will look for other comparatives in the coming months.