On Thursday, 23 April 2026, we hosted an exclusive investor gathering at the Sunborn yacht hotel in Gibraltar. It was a relaxed but focused evening with our investors, partners and close supporters - great food, free drinks, and a deep dive into where the crypto market stands right now, how Sigil is positioned, and the announcement of our newest fund - Sigil Supernova.
Our CEO - Pavel Stehno, began the evening with a direct assessment of the previous year: 2025 was the worst bull market ever. The market experienced a muted top cycle due to less flows into spot markets, supply overhang on altcoins, maturing infrastructure, and emergence of AI which swallows most risk-on liquidity. Major assets posted negative full-year returns in 2025:
- Bitcoin -6.4%
- Ethereum -11.0%
- Solana -39.1%
Active long-only crypto managers fared even worse with top funds delivering estimated drawdowns between -28% and -50%, largely due to concentrated exposures and mean-reversion in infrastructure and altcoin narratives.
Sigil Core’s positioning proved materially different - the fund was around break-even in 2025 in USD terms, and continued to perform well into 2026 (YTD +8.18% vs USD). Our edge came, as usually, from identifying the biggest winners of the cycle and investing in them early and with size:
- Circle ($CRCL) and Hyperliquid ($HYPE) - both of which continued to dominate their verticals in 2026. Sigil Core invested in $HYPE on its first day of trading and still holds it as our largest position in the portfolio. We purchased CRCL for $5B valuation on the private equity markets in summer 2024 resulting in major upside in 2025 post IPO.
- Polymarket ($POLY) which we held since the early days and the $14.1B valuation round at $144 PPS in April 2026 created significant NAV uplift for the fund. Overall, Polymarket brought us almost 100x upside in pure valuation terms, although the dilution over time has been of course significant.
- Disciplined derisking during the year - as markets grew we were gradually taking chips off the table. We finally derisked in Q4 2025 (shortly after the market top) to approx. 40% of the portfolio in cash. This helped to prevent major drawdowns as the crypto markets turned bearish. It also included a complete sell off of our ETH position (as the Tom Lee catalyst effect faded) and a complete sell off of Bitcoin exposure due to quantum computing risks and the lack of a clear upgrade path. Selling all ETH and BTC was considered a bold and unprecedented move by many, as crypto funds usually do hold large positions in these “majors”. However, in Sigil we always need to see clear catalysts ahead and we are not afraid to sell or buy with conviction when we think the time is right.
Pavel continued sharing more fundamental insights into the market winners, losers as well as the zoomed out view on the “4-year cycle theory”. He also looked at the reasons behind it: BTC halving, liquidity cycle, election cycle, OG profit taking as well as behavioral profit taking at the peak of the cycle. The discussion remains on to what degree which factor influences the 4-year cycle, but this cycle repeated itself almost perfectly again suggesting there is an element of self-fulfilling prophecy. So, perhaps, set your calendar notifications for the next 4 years, everyone?
It wasn’t the first crypto cycle for the majority of our investors. Most of you saw us navigate previous cycles and understand the Sigil fund edge comes from the active management during the cycle stages:
- We thrive on identifying the cycle winners as early as possible and sail the hype wave up until it fades (From Technology Trigger to Peak of Inflated Expectations). We’d then ideally sell and avoid the big correction down (similarly to previous cycles where we sold Terra Luna around $100 after buying it early around $0.3)
- We continuously analyse every project for its productive phase and hold them if they have strong fundamentals (we still hold $HYPE and part of our $CRCL position).
In a market that doesn’t enjoy “easy bubbles in everything” like in 2017 anymore, it is important to manage your portfolio actively.
Sigil Stable delivered +11.29% net in 2025. Despite the recent slower gains, there are several near-term positive catalysts in the pipeline (TGEs, retrospective airdrops) that will have a positive impact on the Sigil Stable performance in the upcoming months. We also started investing into our tech & infrastructure edge.
The presentation also touched on our recently launched fund - Sigil Supernova. This new vehicle is built for breakthrough technology opportunities with multi-decade durability. We identified sectors we strongly believe will drive progress of humanity in the coming decades.
Key principles: we invest first and foremost for ourselves (60%+ of AUM remains team capital), we are not running a fundraising process, and capacity is intentionally capped. New commitments are welcome only from aligned long-term partners who understand the partially illiquid nature of the strategy. Feel free to ask us details about Sigil Supernova if you find this interesting.
We encourage you to read the Supernova Memo which gives great inisights into our investment thesis.
We wrapped the formal presentation with a clear forward-looking framework: regulatory tailwinds in the US, continued institutional adoption, the multi-trillion-dollar opportunity in tokenised real-world assets, and the bright future of stablecoins with AI-driven payment systems.
The event was just what it was supposed to be - a combination of market insights, stimulating conversations and the opportunity to meet so many talented forward-thinking people in one room.
Thank you again to everyone who joined us on the Sunborn. We look forward to future gatherings and keeping you up to date with the fast changing (yet fascinating) world of crypto and AI technologies.
See all the highlights from the event in our gallery in the below link.