Deryck Graham

Deryck Graham is a Perth-based serial entrepreneur and investor with over 30 years of experience building and listing companies on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) and roughly 19 years as a public-company director. His early career centered on advanced composites and aviation: he was a director and co-founder of Eagle Aircraft Australia Limited, an ASX-listed company that developed the all-composite Eagle 150 aircraft, which he launched, joint-ventured and ultimately sold to Malaysian interests, forming part of what is today Malaysia's aviation industry.

Graham was one of the three co-founders of Quickstep Holdings (ASX:QHL), described as Australia's largest independent advanced-composites aerospace and defence contractor, now associated with over $1 billion in contracts (earlier reporting cited ~$800 million). He also supported the launch of Recce Pharmaceuticals (ASX:RCE), a listed pharmaceutical company developing synthetic antiviral and antibiotic technology. In April 2012 he left Quickstep, purchased the rights to a folding-boat design, and founded Quickboats, a manufacturer of collapsible boats. He has also owned Golden Rivers Mining, a private investment company.

Graham has been an active investor in the blockchain space since 2017. In 2018 he co-founded and chaired First Digital Capital (FDC), an ASIC-regulated, Australia-domiciled vehicle that set out to raise more than $100 million for equity investments in companies commercializing distributed-ledger technology — pitched at the time as one of the first regulated crypto funds, with Scott Stornetta (co-author of the seminal 1991 blockchain paper) as chief scientist. This work evolved into Portal Asset Management, the digital-asset fund management firm he founded and now leads as CEO/Chairman, operating across Australia, Singapore and Switzerland.

Beyond investing, Graham is co-presenter of the weekly podcast "Beyond Bitcoin," has appeared on the "Crypto Clothesline" podcast, and organizes "Classic Cars and Coffee," described as the largest regular specialist car event in the Southern Hemisphere.

• Blockchain and digital assets are the core thesis. Through First Digital Capital, he targeted four broad categories: early-stage protocols, middleware, decentralized applications (dApps), and blockchain infrastructure (from miners to exchanges), with fintech and healthcare as priority industries.
• Institutional standards applied to a young asset class. FDC was structured to be ASIC-regulated and to invest fiat (not tokens), aimed at Australian family offices and small institutions — reflecting a preference for compliance and risk management over speculative token plays.
• Capital preservation and diversification at Portal. The Portal Digital Fund is a Cayman-domiciled fund-of-hedge-funds (managed by Singapore-based First Degree Global Asset Management) allocating across multiple digital-asset managers, targeting a stated 25–30% p.a. net return with 15–20% annualized volatility and returns uncorrelated with the broader crypto market.
• Founder-operator mindset. His own record of founding, listing and exiting deep-tech companies (aerospace composites, aviation, pharma) suggests he favors technically substantive ventures with a path to commercialization rather than hype.
• In his words, the scale of the opportunity is systemic: "If shippers use a digital currency to transact, trillions of dollars would leave the banking system."