TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington has announced the creation of a $100 million hedge fund that will be denominated in XRP, the native token of Ripple.
Arrington made the announcement at the Consensus: Invest conference in New York, revealing that the fund will be called Arrington XRP Capital. Significantly, investors will buy shares of the fund and receive distributions in XRP, the native currency of the Ripple Consensus Ledger (RCL) and the fourth largest cryptocurrency by total market cap.
“A year ago I was just a crypto enthusiast,” Arrington wrote in a blog post that accompanied the announcement. “Now I’ve altered my career path to focus entirely on cryptocurrencies and related technologies. And this isn’t just a short term focus. With this new fund I’m signaling my intent to spend the rest of my career on cryptocurrencies. There will be dramatic ups and downs along the way, but we’re in this for the long haul.”
The CrunchFund founder wrote that he and the other founding partners of Arrington XRP Capital chose to denominate the fund in cryptocurrency rather than fiat to make it easier for cryptocurrency holders and foreign investors to participate in the fund. They chose XRP due to its “super-fast and secure settlement infrastructure,” which has also been adopted by financial services heavyweights such as American Express.
Arrington said that this feature is not a mere gimmick but will be an integral component of the fund’s operations:
“We’ll pay our own fees and salaries out in XRP as well. We want to “eat our own dog food” and be active users of crypto currencies in as many parts of our fund operations as possible, not just investors. This will make us better investors,” he wrote.
According to Fortune, the fund — which has raised approximately half of its $100 million target — will invest primarily in cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings (ICOs), although it may obtain small equity stakes in blockchain startups.
XRP traded up on the news, briefly cracking the $0.30 barrier for the first time since June. At present, XRP is trading at $0.286, which represents a 24-hour increase of six percent and gives the cryptocurrency a market cap of $11.1 billion.