DIGITAL MONIES, COMMODITIES AND ASSETS - NEWS
As we move into the final weeks of 2020, we are seeing heightened interest in digital monies, digital assets, fintech and blockchain. For us these have been central to our investment thesis for the last decade. Now that we are preparing for another closing of Blockchain Coinvestors, we encourage you to go to www.blockchaincoinvestors.com and sign up if you are an accredited investor and want to know more.
The good news is coming in fast now providing tailwinds for this area. It is not too late to make sure you have capital exposure.
To recap some of the latest news about how investors are pivoting into this space:
More of the world's leading hedge fund managers are betting on Bitcoin. Leading investors including Stanley Druckenmiller, Paul Tudor Jones, Bill Miller, Cathie Wood, and others, are all investing into digital assets and this is reflected in the bitcoin whales analyses, where more institutional owners are climbing the ranks.
Treasurers of corporations with large cash balances are also taking notice as they see the likes of MicroStrategy, Square, and a host of others investing balance sheet cash into bitcoin. With the next massive issuance of trillions of US dollars imminent (once the next Covid driven infusion of cash is agreed in Washington) investors are looking for scarce assets to store their cash in.
For us as equity investors in blockchain businesses, the most powerful trend is towards large institutional support for digital monies and digital assets. When PayPal announces that it will offer Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash to its 300 million users, it needs partners to make it a reality. Our portfolio companies like Anchorage, Bitgo, Coinbase, Paxos, Securitize, SFOX, Uphold, Wyre and many others are well positioned as this institutional demand grows.
The Covid pandemic and US elections have meant that many governments have been distracted, but the digital money conversation is still moving forward. China now has a working digital currency that has been used in millions of transactions representing billions of yuan of value. It works and it appears that China will be the first top 5 economy to fully deploy a native digital money at scale. Other central banks know they are falling behind, and that's something they can't afford especially if they want to maintain their sovereign currency as a means of payment in international trade.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) also seems to be coming of age with the total value locked in DeFi contracts climbing into the double digit billions. We are excited that we are investors in a good number of the DeFi leaders, but conversely, watch with interest whether these projects can ensure viable and secure alternatives to conventional lending, borrowing, investing and trading platforms. There have been too many incidents of hacks and outages for our taste.
If you have not yet allocated any of your own investment portfolio behind this global transformation of our financial systems, do consider so in the remainder of 2020 and 2021.
We struggle to understand how a 60:40 allocation between public equities and fixed income can be an optimum portfolio when the world's highest returning assets are excluded from the analysis - and they are. Most financial advisors, wealth managers, private bankers and so on simply don't have access to the highest performing asset classes on their platforms and it continues to concern us that they will only analyze and recommend the products that they can put your capital into.
An objective advisor considers all options.
It seems to us that the world's best, and most analytical investors are now making allocations into this space.
Please let us know if you want to learn more about how we have been doing this since 2013.
Thank you for reading.
Alison Davis
Matthew C. Le Merle
Blockchain Coinvestors AngelList Syndicate
To be an LP in the Blockchain Coinvestors Syndicate on AngelList, and get access to our deals, go to http://bit.ly/BCSynAL and apply. We’ll announce our first investment opportunity in the next week, and plan on syndicating 6-12 investments a year in this way.
Register Now For Our Upcoming Webinars
As we wrap up 2020, we have some thoughts about what 2021 will bring in regards to blockchain and crypto technologies.
2021 Blockchain Predictions, Nov 30th at 7:00am PST
2021 Blockchain Predictions, Nov 30th at 12:00pm PST
One reason we encourage early investing is the potential to be a part of a unicorn company. Learn more about past and potential blockchain unicorns in this webinar.
Meet the Blockchain Unicorns, Dec 2nd at 7:00am PST
Meet the Blockchain Unicorns, Dec 2nd at 12:00pm PST
Our webinar library can now be found at www.fifthera.com/webinars.
Upcoming Appearances
Matthew is presenting at the 2020 Family Office Forum in Zurich on December 8th and 9th. Please join us for this Prestel & Partner event, either online or in person.
The Linqto Global Investor Conference is coming up in December. Please join Matthew - and a multitude of other experts - during this 2 day event.
Recent Appearances
Matthew Le Merle, best-selling author and Co-founder of Fifth Era moderates a panel with Haseeb Qureshi (Managing Partner, Dragonfly Capital Partners), H. Joshua Rivera (General Counsel, Blockchain Capital), and Matthew Walsh (Partner, Castle Island Ventures) as they discuss what trends are motivating blockchain investments in the market today, which of their portfolio companies is closest to an IPO, and what assets have made their balance sheets.
Learn More
Also visit us at www.fifthera.com and www.blockchaincoinvestors.com to find more information and request our investor materials.
We thank you once again for your support, and we hope that in this challenging time you and your family and loved ones are staying safe and healthy.
Best wishes,
Alison Davis
Matthew C. Le Merle