According to reports from crypto.news and TradingView News, Ripple Labs became the largest private company holding in C1 Fund's portfolio during the second quarter of 2026, accounting for 17.5% of the NYSE-listed fund's net assets as of June 30. Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, ranked second with an allocation equal to 16.9% of net assets. The fund recorded total net assets of $42.6 million, equal to a net asset value of $6.49 per share. This shift comes as institutions increasingly add exposure to XRP through regulated ETFs, with major players like Goldman Sachs allocating $86.5 million across five XRP ETFs in August. The development also comes as private-market exposure to Ripple receives more attention from traditional investment firms, with conservative investors following this trend.
As reported by crypto.news, C1 Fund held $33.07 million in private company investments at fair value on June 30, representing 77.5% of its net assets. Another $9.96 million, or 23.3%, was invested in short-term U.S. Treasury securities. The portfolio covered 11 private or recently public digital asset businesses, including Alchemy, BitGo, Blockchain.com, Chainalysis, ConsenSys, Figment, Fireblocks, Polymarket, and Uphold. C1 Fund added Polymarket parent Blockratize during the second quarter and increased several positions that it initially acquired in 2025. Ripple's weighting reflects the fund's remaining equity position after an earlier partial sale, with the partial issuer buyback generating an approximately 150% return on the portion of its Ripple investment involved in the buyback over roughly four months. Conservative investors are following this trend, with mutual fund Kinetics Internet Portfolio disclosing a stake of 1,875 Class A Ripple Labs shares valued at $246,000 as of June 30, representing roughly 0.1% of the fund's $248.3 million in net assets and classified as a Level 3 asset because Ripple remains privately held.
According to crypto.news, C1 Fund finished the quarter with 6,568,348 shares outstanding and a NAV of $6.49 per share. CFND traded around $2.87 at the end of August, placing its market price more than 56% below the reported quarter-end NAV. A closed-end fund's stock price can trade above or below the value of its underlying portfolio, with the discount reflecting fees, limited liquidity, valuation uncertainty and difficulty of exiting private investments. C1 Fund has been buying its own shares in an attempt to take advantage of this gap, repurchasing and retiring 249,300 shares for an aggregate $824,440 through July 31, with the average buyback price of approximately $3.31 per share. At the current price, the fund's market capitalization is about $19.1 million, which is less than half its $42.6 million net asset value.
Beyond private shares, major institutions are building exposure to XRP itself through regulated spot ETFs. August 13F filings showed Goldman Sachs allocating $86.5 million across five XRP ETFs, with positions including funds from Bitwise, Franklin Templeton, Canary Capital, 21Shares and Grayscale. The combined AUM of spot XRP products reached $1.5 billion in August. Market maker Jane Street increased its stake in the Bitwise XRP ETF to 1.2 million shares, while the SEC also approved Evernorth Holdings' Form S-4 for a SPAC merger and Nasdaq listing under the ticker XRPN, a fund that manages a treasury of 473 million XRP. Ripple is diversifying its own financing through its Ripple Prime division, which closed a $275 million private bond placement rated BBB by KBRA and joined the Clearpool credit fund to issue fintech loans denominated in the RLUSD stablecoin. Clearpool is building credit infrastructure directly on the XRP Ledger with institutional partner Cicada, using the XLS-65 Single Asset Vault and XLS-66 Lending Protocol standards.
As reported by crypto.news, Kraken and Blockchain.com have submitted confidential registration statements for potential U.S. public offerings. Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi confirmed that Kraken had entered the confidential IPO process in April, while Blockchain.com disclosed a similar step. An eventual listing could give C1 Fund a clearer market price for those positions and potentially create a path to sell shares after any lockup period. BitGo, another portfolio company, completed its IPO in January 2026 with 26% year-over-year client growth to 5,833 clients, while Kraken reported 42% growth in funded accounts to 6.6 million. The XRP Ledger is currently processing around 1.09 million transactions per day, though this represents a 42.7% decline from earlier monthly levels, even as the ledger burns roughly 117.83 XRP daily in transaction fees. Meanwhile, Hyperliquid Labs is negotiating a path into the U.S. derivatives market through Kraken's parent company Payward, using Payward's subsidiary Bitnomial as the regulated on-ramp. Payward has already pitched the CFTC on the plan, though former SEC senior counsel Ashley Ebersole indicates the wider regulatory build could take 10 to 12 months even in a best case scenario.
