XBTO Group is a digital asset financial services firm founded in 2015. Headquartered in Nassau, Bahamas, with offices in New York and Geneva, it operates across market making, over-the-counter trading, fund management, and early-stage investing. The firm is one of the longer-standing institutional participants in Bitcoin markets, having entered when liquidity in crypto was still largely retail-driven.
XBTO's investment activity runs through its ventures arm, which focuses on infrastructure, trading technology, and protocol-layer projects. The firm does not disclose total assets under management publicly. Its positioning is primarily as a liquidity provider and market maker rather than a traditional venture fund, which means many of its capital deployments are strategic rather than purely financial. Public information on the full scope of its portfolio is limited.
Notable investments
XBTO has participated in funding rounds across crypto infrastructure and DeFi, though it discloses few deals publicly. Among the more visible associations:
- Elwood Technologies – XBTO was a founding backer of Elwood Technologies, the institutional crypto trading infrastructure platform. Elwood raised $70 million in a 2022 Series A led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, with XBTO among the early strategic investors.
- Bitcoin futures markets – XBTO was a primary market maker when CME launched Bitcoin futures in December 2017, giving it early institutional credibility and relationships that shaped later investment access.
- Additional portfolio positions (8 total per available data) span early-stage crypto infrastructure and DeFi protocols. Specific names beyond Elwood are not consistently disclosed in public filings or press releases.
Public information on the remaining portfolio companies is limited. XBTO has not filed as a registered investment adviser with the SEC in a way that would require public portfolio disclosure.
Team
Philippe Bekhazi serves as CEO and co-founder. He has spoken at institutional crypto conferences and has represented XBTO in interviews on market structure, liquidity, and institutional adoption of digital assets. His background is in traditional finance and trading before moving full-time into crypto markets. Detailed biographical information for the broader leadership team is not consistently available in public sources.
Recent activity
Between 2024 and early 2026, XBTO maintained its focus on institutional market making amid shifting regulatory conditions in the United States and Europe. The firm has commented publicly on the maturation of Bitcoin ETF markets following the January 2024 US spot ETF approvals, which directly expanded the addressable market for institutional liquidity providers like XBTO. No major acquisition or fund close has been publicly announced in that window.
XBTO has also been active in Bahamas-regulated markets, operating under the Digital Assets and Registered Exchanges Act framework – one of the earlier formal crypto licensing regimes globally. This regulatory positioning has been part of its pitch to institutional counterparties seeking compliant OTC and market-making relationships.
XBTO occupies a niche that sits between pure-play venture capital and trading infrastructure. Its 8 portfolio positions reflect selective, strategic investment rather than high-volume deal flow. As institutional demand for crypto liquidity continues to grow – driven by ETF volumes, tokenization pilots, and maturing derivatives markets – firms like XBTO with long track records in market making are well-placed to deepen existing relationships. That said, public transparency around its investment performance and team remains thin compared to dedicated crypto VCs, which makes independent assessment difficult.