# Alexandre Elkrief

> Alexandre Elkrief is the co-founder and co-CEO of August, a New York on-chain prime brokerage that lets institutions trade, borrow, and manage digital assets with the risk controls of traditional finance. He built it after running institutional DeFi positions during the 2020-2022 cycle and watching centralized crypto counterparties collapse. August, formerly Fractal, has processed more than $7 billion in monthly volume; its first application, Upshift, holds roughly $300 million in vaults. Elkrief wants August to become the trust layer institutions plug into - what he calls the BlackRock of DeFi.

- **Role:** Co-Founder and Co-CEO at August
- **Organizations:** August, Upshift, Fractal, LedgerPrime, Knowhere, Deutsche Bank
- **Education:** Stanford University
- **Known for:** Co-founded August (formerly Fractal), an on-chain prime brokerage that has processed more than $7 billion in monthly transaction volume, Grew August to originate more than $400 million in loans within a year, Launched Upshift, August's first application, holding roughly $300 million in total value locked

## Career timeline

- **Earlier** — Worked at Deutsche Bank
- **2017-2018** — Co-founded and served as President of Knowhere, a digital news platform
- **2020-2022** — Portfolio Manager at LedgerPrime, a New York quantitative crypto hedge fund, managing institutional DeFi positions
- **2022** — Co-founded Fractal with Aya Kantorovich; closed first fundraise the week FTX collapsed
- **2023** — Fractal raised around $6 million to rebuild crypto market structure after FTX and 3AC
- **2024** — Fractal rebranded as August; launched Upshift, its first application, an institutional DeFi yield/vault protocol
- **2025** — August raised a $10 million Series A led by Dragonfly Ventures after quietly reaching $7B in monthly volume

## Achievements

- Co-founded August (formerly Fractal), an on-chain prime brokerage that has processed more than $7 billion in monthly transaction volume
- Grew August to originate more than $400 million in loans within a year
- Launched Upshift, August's first application, holding roughly $300 million in total value locked
- Raised a $10 million Series A led by Dragonfly Ventures in March 2025, bringing total funding to around $16 million
- Built the platform to support 12+ blockchains, 250+ tokens, and 70+ protocols in a single on-chain account

## Latest updates

- **2025-03** — August raised a $10 million Series A led by Dragonfly Ventures, disclosing more than $7B in monthly volume and $400M in loans originated.
- **2025-06** — Elkrief publicly framed Upshift as 'democratizing institutional DeFi' as the protocol scaled its vaults.

## Links

- Website: https://augustdigital.io
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-elkrief-0a721b292
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/AElkrief

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/alex-elkrief
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-07