Insights.

Notes from the firm: how we work, what we are building, and how we think about markets. Nothing here is investment advice, and performance is never published.

07 Nov 2026Markets

How the digital asset market grew up

The milestones of the last decade that put regulated access, custody and law in place.

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07 Nov 2026Markets

Why young markets are inefficient

What makes a market efficient, why digital assets are still early, and what careful research has to do with it.

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04 Nov 2026Fund updates

The Target Return Fund opens to subscriptions

Quarterly windows are open until the cap is reached. The terms, and how to subscribe.

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21 Oct 2026Research

Research that is designed to say no

Why most of our ideas are rejected before they ever trade, and why that is the product.

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06 Oct 2026Risk

Read the risks before the terms

A return target is only as credible as the discipline behind it. What stands behind ours.

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How the digital asset market grew up

For most of its early history, the digital asset market ran on infrastructure of its own. Trading took place on exchanges outside the regulated financial system, holders were largely responsible for safeguarding their own assets, and few rules had been written specifically for the asset class.

That changed over a short span of years. Regulated bitcoin futures began trading on CME in December 2017. In July 2020, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency confirmed that US national banks could hold digital assets in custody for their clients. Spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds began trading in the United States in January 2024, and ether funds followed in July. In Europe, the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation came into full effect in December 2024, and in July 2025 the United States enacted its first federal law for stablecoins.

Each step opened the market to a different group of investors. Futures gave institutions a regulated way to hedge and take exposure, bank custody gave them a familiar place to hold assets, and exchange-traded funds brought the market within reach of anyone with a brokerage account. Much of the infrastructure an institutional investor expects is now in place. The market itself is still maturing, and that is the subject of our next note.

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Why young markets are inefficient

A market is efficient when its prices quickly reflect what is known. No market starts out that way. Efficiency is built over time by participants who study prices closely, commit capital when they find a mispricing, and compete with each other to correct it. Equity markets have had decades of that competition, and most simple mispricings there are corrected quickly.

Digital asset markets are much younger. They trade around the clock, a large share of activity still comes from individual investors, and the research infrastructure that professional investors rely on is still being built. As a result, new information can take longer to be reflected in prices, and risk is not always priced the way the evidence suggests. Equity markets passed through a similar stage, and digital assets are passing through it now.

Firms that do careful research play a part in how that changes. When a strategy identifies a price that is out of line and trades on it, the price moves closer to where it should be, and the trade adds liquidity where the market is thin. Done with discipline, this work makes a market cheaper to trade and more reliable for everyone who uses it. It is the work Royal Trust was built to do.

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The Target Return Fund opens to subscriptions

Our first fund is open. The Target Return Fund targets a return of 15⁠–⁠20% per annum from the firm’s systematic strategies, with a minimum term of twelve months, redemption at maturity and a minimum investment of $150,000.

The fund is capped at $5,000,000, and subscriptions open quarterly until the cap is reached. We size the fund to what our strategies can absorb rather than to what could be raised, and we would rather close it than dilute its execution.

To receive the offering documents, write to us through the contact page. The 15⁠–⁠20% is a target, not a guarantee from the firm or any bank or third party; returns can be lower, and capital is at risk.

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Research that is designed to say no

Most research processes are built to find reasons to trade. Ours is built to find reasons not to. Before any strategy earns capital, it has to pass a demanding set of tests designed to expose ideas that only look good by chance.

Most ideas do not survive, and that is the point. The work is reviewed independently, and a strategy that fails any test is rejected however attractive its numbers look. What remains is a small set of strategies we trust.

How the book is built from there is described in our approach.

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Read the risks before the terms

A return target is only as credible as the discipline behind it. That is why we ask every prospective investor to read the risks before the terms: the fund is not a deposit, it is not insured, and redemption before maturity is limited.

Behind the target stand four layers: a reserve held for weak quarters, the firm’s own capital in the first-loss position, a hard cap on the issue, and hard limits enforced in the firm’s own trading systems. None of these make the risk zero. They are how we carry it.

The full picture is on the risk and disclosures page.

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