Morgan Creek Capital Management founder and CEO Mark Yusko is revealing why XRP is not included in the firm’s cryptocurrency index fund.
In a new interview with Thinking Crypto, the hedge fund manager says the primary reason is concern over how centralized the crypto asset is.
“I still struggle with the XRP-Ripple structure – or how cash flows are created or shared. But that’s a topic for another day.
Yes, there is a point at which, if they had enough distribution of XRP, it could qualify for the index.”
Morgan Creek’s Digital Asset Index Fund, which was created to give investors a crypto version of the S&P 500, offers Morgan Creek clients exposure to the 10 largest cryptocurrencies – minus XRP, which is the third-largest cryptocurrency, with a market cap of $8.2 billion.
Yusko also notes that the hedge doesn’t own Stellar (XLM), 13th-largest cryptocurrency.
The Stellar network is an open-source payments platform for all kinds of digital currencies. It was co-founded by Jeb McCaleb, the former co-founder and chief technology officer of Ripple.
The Stellar Development Foundation owns 30 billion of the 50 billion XLM in existence. Yusko explains,
“We exclude anything … that’s too closely held. So we don’t own Stellar and we don’t own XRP.”
Ripple owns more than half of the 100 billion XRP in existence. While most of the coins are locked in escrow, Yusko says his firm remains concerned about potential price manipulation.
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