Mark Cuban, a onetime bitcoin skeptic, now plans to invest in a cryptocurrency fund.
The billionaire is putting his money into 1confirmation, a fund that intends to raise $20 million to invest in cryptocurrency-based companies, reports Bloomberg.
Digital currency hedge funds invest in companies by buying digital tokens, known as initial coin offerings (ICOs). 1confirmation, though, intends to invest in companies at the start-up stage before they offer ICOs, according to Bloomberg.
Interest in cryptocurrencies has grown as digital coins like Bitcoin and Ether have exploded in value over the past year, in some cases rising by 1,000 percent or more.
1confirmation plans to focus its investments on companies making cryptocurrency applications for developers instead of consumers at large, according to the report.
This is based on the premise that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum and the applications created to take advantage of them are still too complicated for the public to adopt.
The fund is joining others like Polychain Capital and Blockchain Capital who also make investments in cryptocurrency companies.
The move is one of Cuban’s first steps into cryptocurrency and comes months after he called bitcoin “a bubble.”
“I think it's in a bubble,” Cuban tweeted about Bitcoin in June. “I just don't know when or how much it corrects. When everyone is bragging about how easy they are making $=bubble.”
The billionaire expressed a change of heart in August, tweeting that he “might have to finally buy some.”
Though he doesn’t own any such currencies himself, Cuban says he plans to buy digital tokens sold by a sports betting platform he owns, Unikrn.
Major venture capitalists and other investors are starting to pay more attention to cryptocurrency-related technology.
Coinbase, the most prominent cryptocurrency wallet app, counts Goldman Sachs and the New York Stock Exchange among its investors. Earlier this month, high-profile venture capital firms like Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz made bets on Filecoin’s ICO, in which the startup raised a record $200 million.
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