News is breaking this week that Serena Williams, an acclimaed tennis pro and four-time Olympic gold medal winner with significant endorsement power, is using her investment platform, Serena Ventures, to buy into Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange that offers quality services and much more.
World famous tennis player Serena Jameka Williams revealed in an Instagram post published on April 17 that in 2014, she launched her investment business Serena Ventures and silently invested in over 30 companies, including major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase,” writes Adrian Zmudzinski in a recent Cointelegraph story covering the investment. “According to the official website of Serena Ventures, the market cap of the portfolio is over $12 billion, and the diversity of the founders of the companies in which the firm invested is 60%. The website further notes that the fund is focused on early stage companies, encourages collaboration among portfolio companies and expands partnership opportunities.”
In her Instagram post, Williams explained the move this way:
“In 2014, (yes I know I can keep a secret) I launched Serena Ventures with the mission of giving opportunities to founders across an array of industries. Serena Ventures invests in companies that embrace diverse leadership, individual empowerment, creativity and opportunity. Slide right to see a few brands in our portfolio. We have so many exciting things coming up! Learn more at serenaventures.com.”
Williams’ buy-in is an interesting one for a number of reasons.
First, it adds to the growing list of celebrities and entrepreneurs who are getting involved in some way in blockchain and cryptocurrency.
Secondly, though, it’s commonly seen as a kind of “smart blockchain investment” – an institutional move that is made on solid ground.
We’ve read stories of rap moguls and other iconic stars buying Bitcoin as an asset and losing it – to theft, to the IRS or in errant wallet designs.
By contrast, Williams isn’t buying a whole lot of Bitcoin and sitting on it (or forgetting that she bought it!). She’s investing in an exchange, which is a secondary institution. The idea is that the investor benefits from the innovation and technical activity over time, not from some assets that are supposed to magically increase in value. It’s like the difference between buying a yacht, or buying a yacht company.
However, it’s important to point out that many of these institutional moves do raise the value of cryptocurrencies over time. For example, if you’re an investor who just wants to beat inflation in order to safeguard your money, and you’re holding Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency as part of a diversified portfolio, examples like this one from Serena Ventures are good for your long-term strategy.
It’s more likely that cryptocurrency values will rise and beat inflation, and even generate significant gains. Many of us believe that wider blockchain adoption is tied to cryptocurrency values, because the greater market responds to all sorts of innovation as a groundswell of support for decentralized networks.
Keep your eyes on Bitcoin, which is just now hovering around $5300, and other top crypto offerings as we see many different kinds of investor activity – by understanding the context here you’ll be more able to predict both short-term and long-term price swings.
