Morgan Creek Digital, the cryptocurrency investment arm of North Carolina-based Morgan Creek Capital Management, wants to bet that the cryptocurrency market will be more valuable than the index of S&P 500 within ten years.
$1 million to any takers
Standard & Poor's 500 is a stock market index that tracks the value of 500 American companies. It has been in operation since 1923, and the fund has a current market capitalisation of around $2.6 trillion.
The cryptocurrency market is currently worth $107.4 billion according to coinmarketcap.com, and at the beginning of the year, it was worth $823.8 billion. On the other hand, Bitcoin’s market capitalisation was bigger than those of 97 percent of companies on the S&P 500 as of October, according to Ibinex.
The wager is of $1 million, to any takers. The company says that the money will be donated to charity.
Buffett Bet 2.0
American billionaire Warren Buffet once bet $1 million that the S&P 500 would beat a group of hedge funds selected by Protégé Partners by being more valuable than them by the end of 2017, a bet which he won. So, Morgan is calling this stunt 'Buffett Bet 2.0'.
Morgan Creek Digital Partner Anthony Pompliano said: "This is a combination of our outlook not only for the upside of Cryptocurrencies but also the outlook on public equities,” Pompliano told CNBC in a phone interview. ” A lot of people might look at this and just think we’re bullish on crypto — but you need to look at what asset we’re going up against. Public equities aren’t exactly at their all time highs either."
The S&P 500 lost almost $755 BILLION today.
That is more money lost in a single day for public equity investors than all crypto investors combined this year. The math don’t lie! ??♂️ — Pomp ? (@APompliano) December 4, 2018
Morgan Creek was established in 2004 by Pompliano and the former chief investment officer of the University of North Carolina, Mark Yusko. It manages around $1.5 billion in investments, according to Forbes.
The cryptocurrency index began in August. It is only available for high net worth people and companies, with a minimum payment of $50,000. The fund tracks the total value of the nine of most valuable cryptocurrencies.
The fund excludes XRP, the token associated with Payments company Ripple with a market value of around $12 billion. This is because too large a proportion of the circulation is in the possession of Ripple, and because the definition of XRP is still in legal limbo in the US. Said Pompliano: "If there’s a central party that owns 30% or more of supply then we withhold those from the index because we think that introduces a lot of additional risk that may not be there if it was a more decentralized network."
