Investing is more than just casual fun, but sports and entertainment heavy hitters are among a new group of venture capitalists putting their support behind cryptocurrency.
Legendary rapper/musician/actor LL Cool J (given name James Todd Smith) and the owner of the National Hockey League’s Florida Panthers, Vincent Viola (also a Wall Street exec) joined forces with other financial titans behind a new fund that already has raised $72 million.
The fund, launched by private equity veteran Glenn Hutchins, his son James Hutchins and partner Travis Scher, has a marquee list of investors including hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, Raj and Indra Nooyi (the latter being the former CEO of PepsiCo) and Josh Harris, billionaire co-founder of the investment company Apollo Group.
Others also on board are venture capitalist Geoff Yang; SoFi CEO and former Twitter COO, Anthony Noto; and Joe Moglia, former CEO of TD Ameritrade and retired Coastal Carolina head football coach.
Hutchins hit big with his private equity tech firm Silver Lake. He began investing in crypto in January 2016 when the price of Bitcoin was around $400. Today it is $32,000.
Still, there are no sure things going forward.
In a story last week for Motley Fool (fool.com), Sean Williams wrote: “(Bitcoin’s) token count is only limited by community consensus and not anything truly tangible. What’s more, only 2,300 businesses in the U.S. accept bitcoin as a form of payment, according to Fundera. That’s out of 7.7 million businesses with at least one employee.”
He added that he’d look elsewhere before “buying into what I view as the most dangerous investment of 2021,” finding that “other companies offer innovation and tangible growth potential that can crush bitcoin in 2021 (and probably well beyond).”
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