Despite the current volatility of the cryptocurrency market, a former executive with Steven Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management, Travis Kling, has taken a bold step to start a hedge fund in October, 2018 which will focus on digital assets.
Kling, who resigned from Steven Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management in December 2017, had the intention of starting his own hedge fund before the cryptocurrency market started experiencing the downward trend since the beginning of the year.
The hedge fund which is to be named “Ikigai” is to be launched on 1st October and its headquarters will be in Delaware in the United States. Although it will be regulated by authorities in Delaware, the fund’s small 13 person team however is to be located somewhere in Los Angeles, California.
After its launch, the fund is to be backed by “an unspecified amount of capital invested by unnamed partners” but more traders are to be added as the fund grows. In addition, the former institutional trader plans to add $15 million worth of outside capital one month after the fund is launched.
Allocated capital to the fund will initially be cash while Kling explores ways of venturing into the digital asset market to move his investment in that direction.
It is interesting to note that Kling is not discouraged by the unstable cryptocirrency market and is going on with his plans to launch the fund. Although he is described as “non-techie”, he has a positive mindset concerning the crypto market and has this to say about tit.
“I am more confident than ever. This will be a multi-trillion-dollar asset class. It will be part of our everyday lives. It’s still very early, but the development and growth of this technology will be exponential.”
Kling sees a bright future for his new fund with a worth of $100 million by the year 2019 and his venture branch to be over $33 million in invested capital. Interested foreign investors can be part of the fund by simply allocating capital via an investment vehicle based in Cayman Islands.
Despite the downward trend in the cryptocurrency market, more exchanges are expanding and the market is flooded with new investment vehicles on a daily basis. These developments may be pointing to a brighter future for cryptocurrncies although it is hard to tell at the moment, given the unpredictable nature of things.
The cryptocurrency community as well as critics will have to wait and see how things pay out in the next coming months and beyond.
