UPDATED 13:30 EDT / MARCH 14 2018

EMERGING TECH

Venture firm funds the decentralized dream of cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency has become a polarizing force in the economy at large. While some fear the digital currency’s unreliability, others are able to work within its natural fluctuations and take advantage of a market they see as primed for a boom. With its constant market changes, investors for cryptocurrency’s underlying ledger technology, blockchain, must innovate to continue driving the market with minimized risk.

“Arcadia Crypto Ventures [is] a private fund. … We believe in the whole crypto space. We believe this market is expanding and it is growing and it’s going to be the biggest thing that ever happened. We invest in … the whole space. Not one bitcoin or Ethereum, but everything,” said Nithin Eapen (pictured), chief investment officer and partner at Arcadia Crypto Ventures. An investment firm designed with crypto in mind, Arcadia believes firmly in the decentralization of assets, and it strategically invests in the people and projects to make that dream a reality.

Eapen spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at the Polycon18 event in The Bahamas. They discussed the potential of blockchain tech and how Arcadia nurtures companies and teams for the good of the market overall.

‘This is just the beginning’

Though many new to cryptocurrency may see its previous rise and fall as the end of the game, Eapen is confident that blockchain’s impact is still yet to be discovered — and he runs Arcadia’s investments with that goal in mind. “We believe in the whole tokenization world,” he said.

Above the technology’s market potential, Arcadia’s mission is to see cryptocurrency live out the decentralized dream of the early internet. “We want a censorship-resistant world. … The internet space itself is going to change. … This is the greatest sociopolitical economic experimental revolution that has ever happened,” Eapen said.

To carry out that revolutionary dream, Arcadia must ride the wave of crypto’s often erratic fluctuations. Eapen accomplishes this by working under a flexible investment philosophy. “We don’t really know what’s going to win, but we make prudent investments in areas that we think will win. We like to spread it around a little bit,” he said.

Arcadia selects its investment partners through a carefully considered process unique to its mission and the space, determining them ultimately based on relation to relative market size and potential for decentralization. “It doesn’t have to be a very big market. … [If the] founder is good, he has an idea, it is a space that can be decentralized and people can come in and they feel that they’re part of the ecosystem,” Eapen said.

The company takes the approach of funding its partners with small amounts incrementally, forcing them to accept other investments that ultimately create a network of demand around the company. “We believe that if a founder is raising money, he has to raise it through small checks from everybody. That means all those people are really interested in this, and all of them really want the token to go up,” Eapen said.

With the industry’s popularity on the rise, Eapen sees many traditional investors missing the mark when it comes to working in crypto. “They have a fear that they have missed out. They are missing the picture that this is just the beginning,” he said.

Though blockchain’s fluctuations and new investor competition may mean Arcadia will face greater challenges in the space, Eapen affirms they are just getting started. “We’re not exiting our positions. We are in the long game,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Polycon18.

Photo: SiliconANGLE

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