TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is offering some new insight on his experience in the world of cryptocurrency.
Arrington’s hedge fund Arrington XRP Capital now has 35 crypto companies in its portfolio.The company launched late last year and is denominated in XRP. Investors contribute XRP to the fund instead of fiat currency, and distributions and fees are typically paid in XRP as well.
“Ripple – or, in this case, XRP is the actual currency – is a really, really good way to move money,” Arrington told CNBC’s Crypto Trader. “So we denominate our fund in XRP because it’s a fantastic way to move money across borders very quickly at almost zero cost.”
Arrington says XRP’s speed and efficiency places it in a class of its own.
“There’s a lot of tribalism in cryptocurrency and a lot of Bitcoin maximalists. The one thing they all agree on is they all hate XRP because it’s centralized. They think it’s corporate managed, et cetera. None of that’s really true. What it is is a fantastic way to move money, and while the other more decentralized cryptocurrencies sort of find their way toward becoming more efficient, in the meantime XRP is fantastic. And so from a hedge fund point of view, it’s great to denominate ourselves in XRP.”
Ripple owns 60% of the total supply of XRP. Overall, Arrington says his hedge fund is widely diversified, with 3 – 4% of the fund currently in XRP.
“The key thing is the underlying asset. So only a small percentage of our fund holds XRP. We’re vastly diversified. Those underlying assets, whatever their value is, that’s what really matters at the end of the day…
We hold a lot of Bitcoin. We hold more Bitcoin than anything else. We hold a lot of Ether. We hold a lot of US dollars. Occasionally we hold Tether overnight.”
Arrington also highlighted Mainframe, Metadium and Fantom, three platforms in his company’s portfolio:
Mainframe, a platform for decentralized applications that is resistant to censorship and surveillance, giving people a way to communicate in a secure, decentralized and highly encrypted fashion.
Metadium, a next-generation identity protocol that allows users to manage and protect personal data.
Fantom, a DAG-based, smart contract platform that addresses the issue of scalability and the requirements for confirmation time on the blockchain.
