Bitget, the world's largest Universal Exchange (UEX), has launched Project Archimedes, a $300 million institutional capital programme aimed at supporting quantitative trading firms, asset managers and market makers across the Middle East and North Africa region.
With the vision of backing minds that move markets, Project Archimedes will support firms at different stages of growth through two programs:
Capital Provider Program ($100 million): Allocated to accelerate emerging and growing quantitative firms running market-neutral strategies. Bitget will provide capital, with returns shared under an agreed structure and risk framework.
Interest-Free Lending Program ($200 million): Available to established institutions with mature strategies and existing trading scale. Eligible firms can access interest-free capital by meeting defined trading volume or position requirements, reducing funding costs while increasing the capital available to their strategies.
According to Bitget, institutional trading is entering a period where access to capital, execution quality and risk control increasingly determine which strategies can scale.
Arbitrage returns across established crypto markets have tightened as competition has increased, leading quantitative firms to explore market structures such as basis spreads, funding-rate differences and tokenised assets, it added.
"Strong strategies often reach a point where talent is no longer the constraint but capital might," remarked Gracy Chen, CEO at Bitget.
"Project Archimedes gives capable teams the acceleration it needs to scale, while aligning capital, risk and execution around sustainable performance. Our goal is to boost over fifty projects in the next six months with this capital," she stated.
Project Archimedes will focus initially on market-neutral strategies with established operating histories and measurable risk controls. Participating institutions will undergo strategy assessment, due diligence and drawdown reviews.
The program takes its name from Archimedes’ principle that the right fulcrum can move the world. For institutional trading firms, capital provides that fulcrum, while product structure and infrastructure determine how effectively it can be used.
Tokenised US stocks offer one example. Arbitrage opportunities can arise from differences in basis and funding rates across spot and derivative markets.
These strategies typically require firms to maintain positions on both sides of a trade, which can tie up margin across separate accounts, it added.
