Mike Novogratz’s crypto merchant bank, Galaxy Digital Holdings, has reported a net loss of $76.65 million for the third quarter of 2018.
Revealed in the firm’s latest financial report, published Tuesday, that figure accounted for more than a third of its nine-month loss of $175.68 million. Both periods ended Sept. 30.
Galaxy Digital recorded a net realized loss for digital assets at $38 million in Q3, a major contributor to the overall net loss. It had total operating expenses of almost $30 million in the same period. The firm held digital assets or cryptocurrencies with a “fair value” of $123 million at the end of Q3.
Its total assets stood at $418.5 million at the end of September, up from $54.7 million at the close of 2017.
The firm said in the report that it engages in several trading strategies, including cross-exchange arbitrage, as well as “market neutral” trading strategies, across crypto assets and exchanges.
Novogratz, a former Goldman Sachs partner, recently told the FT that this year has been tough for his company, saying it “sucks to build a business in a bear market.”
However, he predicted that financial institutions will transition from investing in cryptocurrency funds to investing in the cryptocurrencies themselves in the first quarter of next year.
“You’ll see that flip next year. That’s when prices start moving again,” he said.
As a result of the weak financial results, shares in Galaxy Digital listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange are down by over 10 percent at $1 at press time.
Earlier this week, Galaxy Digital and nine other firms formed the Association for Digital Market Assets (ADAM) with the aim of standardizing a code of conduct for the still-nascent digital assets sector.
Mike Novogratz image via CoinDesk archive