Pirate Gold Corp.

Pirate Gold Corp.

Mark Yusko and Dan Tapiero co-founded Pirate Gold Corp. in 2017 as a dedicated digital-asset credit and lending manager. Yusko brought the institutional-allocator pedigree from his decades running Morgan Creek Capital Management, while Tapiero supplied the macro and crypto-native networks from his time at 10T Holdings. The firm operates out of Miami, Florida. Pirate Gold runs two parallel strategies: a liquid crypto lending book that originates collateralized loans to trading firms and market makers, and a venture debt arm that writes structured credit to growth-stage blockchain companies. The lending side typically requires over-collateralization in Bitcoin or Ethereum; the venture-debt book targets borrowers who have already raised equity from Tier 1 crypto VCs and need non-dilutive growth capital. The geographic footprint concentrates on North American and European borrowers, with selective exposure to Asian trading desks. Named counterparties have included major crypto exchanges and institutional trading firms, though the firm does not publicly disclose individual loan positions. Team size remains private, but the firm draws on the combined networks of its co-founders: Yusko's institutional relationships through Morgan Creek's fund-of-funds platform and Tapiero's direct connections across the crypto venture ecosystem. In early 2025, Pirate Gold participated in a structured credit round for a leading Bitcoin layer-2 protocol, signaling appetite for infrastructure-stage deals alongside liquid-market lending. The firm does not appear to operate adjacent philanthropic or real-asset vehicles. Pirate Gold's structural differentiator is its balance-sheet flexibility. Unlike most crypto hedge funds — which lock investors into quarterly redemption cycles — the credit fund operates on rolling capital calls with shorter duration loans, giving it the ability to scale deployed capital up or down within weeks. This makes it a liquidity provider during crypto market dislocations, precisely when lending rates spike and most directional funds are sidelined by redemptions.