The Biggest Cryptocurrency Funds Of 2017
In less than a year, between 2016 and 2017, the crypto market has exploded massively from less than a $20 billion to over $300 bn today. Bitcoin and other popular cryptocurrencies have led this growth and it’s inspired investors to create their own cryptocurrencies and funds around them.
Here’s a list of the biggest cryptocurrency funds of 2017.
- Grayscale’s Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC) — The biggest Crypto investment fund trading on the market. ($1.1 billion in assets) The fund was created and launched in September 2013. Currently, this trust holds around 175,000 Bitcoins and individual investors can purchase shares of the trust. According to their current stock holdings, 100 shares of the Grayscale trust is worth one Bitcoin.
To invest in GBTC they charge 2% of the amount invested. For many individual investors, it’s easy and affordable, which has been a prominent reason for the rise of GBTC.
With the unexpected boom in Bitcoin prices last year the trust seemed to grow not only in investments but also in NAV, which went up by over 60% in the last 4 months of 2017.
Ethereum classic investment trust and Zcash Investment trust are the two other crypto funds owned and managed by Grayscale.
2. The Logos Fund — This was another big crypto funds that grew on a large scale amongst investors in 2017. Claiming to be the world’s first “Bitcoin mining fund” the brand is focused on mining cryptocurrency.
However, it offers both — bitcoin mining and buy-and-hold investing. Unlike Grayscale’s Bitcoin Investment Trust, The logos fund is private and it was created by Marco Streng. Marco Streng is the founder of hosted cloud mining company Genesis mining.
The logos fund has over $100 million in the funding and Genesis mining was the first investor and partner. On top of Bitcoin mining, they also invest in other Bitcoin-related businesses.
3. Pantera ICO fund — Dedicated to investing only in token sales of popular ICOs, this fund was created by Pantera Capital in June 2017. It is managed and run by the CEO of Pantera Capitals, Dan Morehead and Joey Krug (Co-founder at Augur). In less than a year since its inception, the Pantera ICO fund has well over $100 million in funds. Unlike other two crypto funds mentioned above, the Pantera ICO fund is limited only to US investors.
4. Arrington XRP capital — This cryptocurrency investment fund was launched in November 2017 and is one of the latest big crypto investment funds. Michael Arrington, founder of two popular entities, TechCrunch and Crunchfund is the man behind the creation and launching of Arrington XRP capital. XRP is also over $100 million but, unlike larger crypto funds, it does not accept dollars or any other fiat currency from its investors.
5. Polychain Capital Fund — Polychain is a US-based crypto hedge fund dedicated to investing in crypto assets. They have over $250 million in funding under their management, but exact numbers aren’t available since they are a private fund.
It was created in 2016 by Carlson-Wee of Coinbase. He is also the managing director of the Polychain capital fund, based in San Francisco. The Polychain Capital Fund is also backed by Venture Capital firm, Sequoia Capital. They manage and deal with existing and new tokens, ICOs and a range of crypto assets.
The massive funds and their success stories are expected to continue in 2018 and we will see new funds join the club of biggest crypto funds.
