Global asset management firm GoldenTree revealed a $5.3 million token stake in decentralized exchange (DEX) SushiSwap, with the SUSHI token soaring 13% as bullish investors piled in.
GoldenTree has around $50 billion in assets under management and said it had been “following SushiSwap for a while.” The asset managers recently launched their crypto-focused GoldenChain Asset Management division and said they were “psyched to be more active in all things Sushi.”
GoldenTree said it plans to focus on helping SushiSwap work on its tokenomics and general strategy, among other objectives. SushiSwap is a fork of another popular DEX, Uniswap, and was launched in 2020.
GoldenTree’s disclosure comes just days after the DAO behind SushiSwap elected Jared Grey as the new “head chef,” or CEO. This followed a year of top leadership instability at SushiSwap, with founding member 0xMaki leaving last September and CTO Joseph Delong jumping ship to NFT lending platform Astaria in December.
As with the rest of the crypto world, investor confidence in the protocol has tanked over the past few months, with SUSHI down 90% from a year-high of $13 in March this year.
While it recognized this, GoldenTree also said it thought SushiSwap still had “incredible potential.”
“Although the community has certainly been through some tough challenges, we’ve been amazed at the resilience of both the core team and the community in the face of these speed bumps, as you all have continued to build and release top-tier products,” the company wrote.
Whales pile into DeFi
But the involvement of large investors like GoldenTree, also known as “whales,” has raised questions as to the decentralized nature of SushiSwap.
In the last election, just two wallets, GoldenTree and Cumberland, a large crypto trading firm, cast 8 million of the 13 million votes recorded. What’s more, 11 million votes in total came from just five large wallets.
This is not GoldenTree’s first foray into crypto investments, as it also added an undisclosed amount of Bitcoin to its balance sheet last year.
The asset manager further wrote it had put together a team of ten “crypto natives” as part of its GoldenChain launch, who will focus entirely on crypto markets.
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