Why Berachain Gave Brevan Howard a Secret $25M Escape Hatch - Ep. 961

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If I was another investor in Barichain series b and I wasn't told that Nova Digital was given a refund, right, I'd feel a little bit left out to dry. Right? Like, they get this unlimited downside risk, but I have to actually risk my capital. And, you know, if I was a series b investor and I spent $3 per token, I could be down quite a bit at this point in time. And so that's that's really what's unique here.

I'm executive editor Steve Birlik here at Unchained. I have Jack Kubanak with me who published a really interesting story about BarreChain's series b fundraise and some unusual terms offered to a very big name investor. So, welcome, Jack. Thanks for joining us. And and why don't you briefly just introduce yourself, since you're new to the

Yeah. Thanks, Steve. Stoked to be here. A big fan of Unchained. I, as you said, spent the past two years at Blockworks. I was actually their first and only editorial intern back in the day in 2022, covered the trial, all all that fun stuff. And most recently moved into a role as kind of an investigative and scoops reporter over there. We put up work on, you know, Movement Labs, if people remember that story, the pump fun token sale, a a bit gets layer two morph. But but at the time that as listeners of this show may know, the Blockworks let its newsroom go. There was one final kind of project

Yeah. Well, again, we're all sorry to hear about what happened with the editorial team at at Blockworks, but I guess at least in this one very unique case, their loss was our gain. We're happy to publish it. We're gonna get into all the details. I know that this story garnered a lot of attention online in particular. But first, let's take a brief break to hear from some of the sponsors who make this show possible.

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Alright. So let's just kinda level set here. I mean, why don't you just briefly tell us about the story, Jack? Like, what are, like, the two or three key takeaways that people who read it should come away with?

Yeah. So I obtained documents from Barachain, which is a layer one blockchain. It's themed around bears. And earlier this year, it raised a $142,000,000 in funding, I believe. And one of their lead backers was Brevin Howard Digital, a large, very famous hedge fund. And what these documents showed was that the sort of term sheet that Brevan a fund within Brevan Howard actually signed offered the firm a refund right where for up to a year after TGE or when the BERA token came out in February 2025, that fund could ask for a refund. Those any time. Now this is a a really remarkable kind of right.

Yeah. I mean, this story was it was really kind of interesting to to look at because, I mean, we've both looked at these ty