The world’s 317th richest person takes a shot at cryptocurrencies.
Henry Kravis is the 317th richest person in the world and a co-founder of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR). And now he’s dipping his toes into the cryptocurrency sector to see what might happen.
He is in good company. Other financial wizards, such as Peter Thiel, Louis Bacon and Alan Howard have also entered the digital currency fray. For example, Howard has hired an employee just to help him with his substantial cryptocurrency investments. His firm Brevan Howard Asset Management has not invested, but Howard has made personal acquisitions and Brevan Howard’s partners had invested in crypto assets with the asset management company looking to enter the ICO market as well as funding blockchain startups.
Thiel is best known as the co-founder of PayPal. He has been a bitcoin bull for some time and also invests in tech companies such as Facebook and Spotify. Louis Bacon, alongside Thiel and Howard invested in Block.One, which manages EOS, a platform that has enjoyed some spectacular profits in recent times. So, they must be feeling pleased.
Kravis has apparently invested in a former KKR employee. Ben Forman is the co-founder and CIO of ParaFi Capital based in San Francisco. He revealed that Kravis had invested in his flagship crypto fund: ““In the high-yield markets, I used to fight to outperform the index by tens of basis points. Crypto, on the other hand, due to its nascency, offers a tremendous amount of alpha to active managers.”
Forman also stated that his company currently manages $25 million and aims to reach $100 million by Q1 2020. At KKR he worked on its credit business and debts investments as well as leading the firm’s in-house blockchain and crypto research team. He said, “While I toyed with the idea of pursuing blockchain investing within KKR, it was clear to me that the firm did not provide the optimal format to do so. Instead of pursuing crypto at KKR, I wanted to build the KKR of crypto.”
Kravis, whose firm has a net income of almost $800 million, is personally worth $5.7 billion.
Increasingly it looks like the big, smart money is going over to the ‘crypto’ side!