On 23rd July, Ran Neu-Ner at the Korea Blockchain Week interviewed Michael Arrington of Arrington’s XRP Capital, who also recently founded the business information and data company called CrunchFund. During the discussion, he spoke about the underlying asset value of XRP, the token’s use-case, few of his favorite recently made investments for Arrington’s XRP Capital and more.
Neu-Ner began by asking about ‘why he started a fund denominated in XRP’. The fund-manager responded by explaining how XRP is an excellent means of moving money across borders. Arrington also admitted that there are many in the cryptocurrency space who discredit XRP through a driven misconception of the token being centralized. In his words:
“Ripple, or in this case XRP, the actual currency is a really, really good way to move money. We denominate our fund in XRP because it is a fantastic way to move money across borders quickly and at almost zero cost. So there is a lot of tribalism in cryptocurrency, and a lot of Bitcoin maximalists… The one thing they all agree on is that all of them hate XRP because it is centralized, they think it is corporate-managed.”
He also added that XRP can fulfill a great amount of purpose in the space, while other decentralized cryptocurrencies are working their way towards gaining more efficiency. Thus, from a hedge-fund point of view, it is suitable to denominate in XRP.
The conversation led to ‘the risks of denominating in XRP’, given that the market endures much fluctuation. According to Arrington, the key to these investments is the underlying value of the asset. He also revealed that only a narrow percentage of his company’s fund is holding XRP, the rest being vastly diversified. A rough figure of 3-4% or ‘a few million dollars’ worth of XRP was quoted to have been sitting in the fund currently.
Next, Neu-Ner fetched Arrington’s response to the fund’s ‘cash position’. The investor explained by citing the proportions of various currencies and assets in his fund. He stated:
“Let’s say there’s a hedge-fund in Tokyo, if they hold in dollars, isn’t that also a cash position? It’s really hard to know. We hold a lot of Bitcoin; we hold more Bitcoin than anything else. We hold a lot of Ether, we’ve a lot of USD. Occasionally, we hold Tether overnight. So, I don’t know which ones are the cash positions. They’re all either currencies or have different utilities.”
Out of all the investments, Arrington’s XRP Capital is known to be the most enthusiastic about Mainframe, a UK based blockchain startup. About Mainframe, the investor added:
“…it’s a fantastic company, they’re actually helping to spread freedom. And like in a real way not just like in a clichéd way. Real excited about them, they’re making a lot of money, and that’s really good.”
On the Asian front, South Korea has been the focus with investments such as Metadium, Phantom, Aergo, among others. Arrington also notified and appreciated the increasingly innovative and entrepreneurial activities taking place in South Korea.
With regards to investments in decentralized applications [dApps], exchanges and suchlike, Arrington’s XRP Capital is involved in quite a few of them and might see a lot of compelling applications come out by the next year.
Lastly, Neu-Ner asked a final question to seek a general opinion on Bitcoin’s performance in the upcoming months. To this, Arrington replied:
“My entire life has been in cryptocurrency, we’re on bullish on it. But I’m always an optimist, right? I think we’re still gonna hit $25,000 this year easy and I sure hope we’re at a low right now.”
Both the crypto-experts agreed on the speculation and stated ETF as the possible reason for the future success of Bitcoin. The ETF for Bitcoin is believed to be created between August and October, which will provide many institutional investors with custody options, giving Bitcoin price a great flight.
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