Does anybody have any idea if CFIG, or havelock escrow, holds any of the IPO funds in bitcoin?
Given the recent price rise, and overall bullish upturn in the market, this is probably quite material in terms of both salvage value (in case of bad outcome) and runway/lift speed, in good scenario.
I suppose we will know for certain when CFIG publishes its next quarterly statement.
The next milestone will be when the first exchange goes live, and
https://www.cryptocapital.co/#!exchanges/c1df1
starts filling out.
Overall, I view CFIG as a bitcoin hedge, and also sort of a bet on the crypto ecosystem in general as opposed to bitcoin specific.
So, in a success scenario with both bitcoin taking over the world and CFIG succeeding as an enterprise, I would expect CFIG to do quite well for outperforming the dollar but not beating bitcoin in terms of absolute returns. On the other hand, if something changes in the bitcoin story and another altcoin or altcoins mounts a credible market share grab, investing in something like CFIG will make a lot of sense.
I expect institutional investors interested in grabbing some crypto market share without exposing themselves to the full volatility of bitcoin might see it that way as well, so we could see the company traded on a mainstream stock exchange alongside bitcoin etf etc, as sort of core crypto portfolio company.
The main downside risk is technical and regulatory of course.
That 8 second load time is kind of a canary in the coal mine for me. And as others have brought up, it's not clear if the "offload your aml/kyc" strategy and foster a lot of mid size exchanges can get traction, let alone be legal in enough places.
Is bitstamp + btc-e + coinbase + circle going to have 95% of market share in five years? If the answer is yes, then CFIG is pretty much uninteresting.
But if we see a broad ecosystem of mid size exchanges with low founding costs, collaborating in a federated system, then there's a pretty good chance that CFIG was the pioneer of that particular model and has first mover advantage in a significant global market trend.
So, it's a hedge that could become a ten or hundred bagger I suppose.
