The assets under management (AUM) of cryptocurrency-focused hedge fund Polychain Capital have recently dropped about 40% from nearly $1 billion to $594.5 million in the last quarter of 2018.

According to filings submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the San Francisco-based hedge fund reported $967.8 million in AUM in April of last year, a figure that dropped by $376.4 million in8 months.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the decline was caused by a sharp fall in “the value of its holdings” forced by the year-long bear market the cryptocurrency space has endured, “rather than.. redemptions by [its] investors.”

The year-long bear market saw the price of the top 100 cryptoassets drop by roughly 85% from their all-time high, with bitcoin dropping from a near $20,000 all-time high in late 2017 to $3,200 in December of last year. The SEC filing read:

There is no assurance that digital assets will maintain their long-term value in terms of purchasing power in the future, or that acceptance of digital asset payments by mainstream retail merchants and commercial businesses will grow.

Polychain Capital notably made headlines when it was founded back in 2016, as it was created by one of the first employees of Coinbase, Olaf Carlson-Wee. It quickly became one of the industry’s top hedge funds, investing in tokens and not in companies.

Last year the company’s CEO revealed tech industry titans such as Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn were seeing some of their top talent leave to join the growing cryptocurrency startup ecosystem, in what he deemed an “absolute exodus” of talent.

As covered Pantera Capital, another cryptocurrency hedge fund, registered significant losses last year, as the bear market influenced its holdings as well. At the time its performance was so poor strictly holding BTC would’ve resulted in better performanc