Our investment thesis at Arrington XRP Capital is to invest in great people and great projects. It really is that simple, and sometimes that means we invest in our “competitors” – other funds making investments into crypto-focused companies and projects.
We’ve made three investments in other funds to date – Ausum Ventures last year, one confidential investment (per the request of the fund), and most recently, Dekrypt Capital. More investments into other crypto-focused funds will come in time.
Why Dekrypt Capital? It’s all about the people. Jon Allen, Howard Wu, Ronen Kirsh and Jack Baumruk are the Dekrypt partners. They are among the most respected people investing in crypto projects today.
In 2011 they were mining Bitcoin.
In 2014 they invested in the Ethereum ICO.
In 2015 they helped develop Zcash, the first untraceable token with zero-knowledge proofs.
In 2016 they created Blockchain at Berkeley.
In 2017 the SEC spoke for the first time at a blockchain conference hosted by Dekrypt.
And in 2018 they hosted the first San Francisco Blockchain Week, with over 4,000 attendees.
Howard’s background in cryptography and various papers he has written such as DIZK and ZEXE have positioned him as one of the leaders in the zero knowledge proof domain.
They were co-investors in about half our deals last year, so we already knew they made some great investments. Like us, they aren’t shy about traveling and have made investments in fifteen companies in five countries.
They don’t publicize themselves much (a refreshing change in this industry), they have spectacular credentials, and bend over backwards to assist the companies they invest in. Actually, they help anyone that asks, even if they haven’t invested. When someone reaches out to them, they say yes, and help all they can.
Here’s an example of how helpful they are. Earlier this year we were expanding our team (eventually merging with another firm). We reached out to many people in the industry for assistance in finding good people. Ronen and Jon quickly came back to us with two amazing candidates out of Berkeley. Their deep ties to Blockchain at Berkeley helped us immensely.
Dekrypt has been in the blockchain space for a long time and will continue to be in the blockchain space for a long time. They have a builder’s mentality and the companies we have co-invested with them say that they are very engaged. Being helpful to your companies is perhaps the best way to advertise yourself – people talk, and being a force for good is a good reputation to have.
Their focus is on early stage projects. They have deep technical backgrounds and close ties with the developer communities which allows them to help their companies solve technical challenges as well as build out their team as they scale.
Dekrypt focuses on privacy preserving technologies and believe there are massive potential applications ranging from scalability, interoperability and obviously privacy. Like us, they believe this thesis is being validated and will continue to grow in importance.
They raised $20 million last year to start the fund, and they are now raising additional capital, as we did in late 2018. We made the investment last month and are proud to be doing business with them.
