David Swensen, the legendary chief investment officer of Yale University’s $29.4-billion endowment, has apparently bucked the trend of some other high-profile investors and begun betting on the cryptocurrency market.
CNBC is reporting that Swensen has invested in two crypto-focused venture funds: Andreessen Horowitz’s recently launched $300 million fund and Paradigm, which is a new fund focused on blockchain and cryptocurrency that was started by Sequoia Capital partner Matt Huang and Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam.
Andreessen Horowitz has been a steadfast champion of the crypto market, investing in Coinbase back in 2013 and backing Bitcoin in 2014. The launch of A16z back in June represented the VC giant’s first crypto-dedicated fund.
Swensen is a highly influential investor, especially among institutional investors, and his bet on crypto is no doubt welcome news for the digital coin market, which has now experienced a downturn worse than the dot-com crash. Cryptocurrencies have also struggled to convince many A-List investors of its legitimacy, getting rebuked by JPMorgran’s Jamie Dimon, Bridgewater Associates’ Ray Dalio and Warren Buffett.
Per CNBC:
Swensen started at Yale in 1985 when the endowment managed just over $1 billion, according to its alumni magazine, which has also called him Yale’s “in-house Warren Buffett.” It’s now the second largest endowment, behind Harvard, investing in everything in from venture capital and buyout firms to timber.
Yale’s endowment returned an annualized 7.4 percent in the past decade and 11.8 percent over 20 years, according to its annual report. The fund gained 12.3 percent from June 2017 through June 2018, the university announced this week. Harvard University, with a $39.2 billion endowment, posted a 10 percent gain.
Citing data from Autonomous Next, CNBC notes that there are currently 389 global cryptocurrency funds.
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