- Bridgewater Associates plans to back its first crypto fund, CoinDesk reported Monday.
- Ray Dalio's hedge fund doesn't currently plan to directly invest in cryptocurrencies, the report said.
- The investment is tiny in comparison with Bridgewater's $150 billion in managed assets, according to its source.
Ray Dalio's Bridgewater Associates plans to back a crypto fund for the first time, CoinDesk reported Monday.
The hedge fund is set to invest in an external crypto vehicle, but it isn't currently planning to invest directly in crypto assets itself, the report said, citing unspecified sources.
This is the first indication that the world's largest hedge fund, with nearly $150 billion in assets under management, is embracing digital assets. It also underlines the solidifying of interest in crypto among top financial institutions.
But Bridgewater's investment in the crypto fund — which could go forward in the first half of 2022 — is tiny in comparison to the assets it manages, according to a CoinDesk source.
"They're planning on having a small slug of their fund deployed directly into digital assets," the source told the outlet.
Other prominent crypto investors are said to be backing the fund too. Bridgewater didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
In a January research report, Connecticut-based Bridgewater said it believes "crypto markets are now large enough to allow for positions in sizes relevant to institutional investors."
The institutional space is moving quickly, and several hedge funds are getting into digital assets. London-based investment firm Marshall Wace last year was reportedly looking to raise a new fund to invest in blockchain technology, digital currency payment systems, and stablecoins.
Billionaire Steve Cohen's Point72 Ventures has already made five investments in the crypto sector, with plans to start investing in tokens this year.
Dalio, the founder and co-chief investor of Bridgewater, hasn't always been open to cryptocurrencies. He called bitcoin a bubble in 2017, and three years after that, he laid out three reasons why it can't serve as an effective currency.
But he changed his mind in 2021, and went so far as to praise the leading cryptocurrency for its resilience.
"It has not been hacked. It has not been made obsolete. It has proven itself to be an asset which has imputed value," he told Insider in a December interview. "It's probably the next generation's version of gold."
Dalio separately revealed in December that he owns ether in addition to bitcoin, saying cryptocurrencies make up a "relatively small part" of his portfolio.
Allocating up to 2% of your portfolio to bitcoin is a reasonable bet, he believes.