New York-Traded Fund Reveals Ripple as Top Holding, Overtaking Kraken

C1 Fund Inc. (NYSE: CFND), a closed-end fund traded on the New York Stock Exchange, has disclosed its portfolio structure for the second quarter of 2026. According to the official release, Ripple Labs Inc. was recorded as the fund’s largest holding, accounting for 17.5% of net assets, ahead of Kraken’s parent structure, Payward, Inc., which stood at 16.9%.

With the fund’s total NAV at $6.49 per share, the position allocation was shaped in part by Ripple Labs’ own partial share buyback program (issuer buyback), which brought C1 Fund a return on investment of roughly 150% over four months. 

riAs of June 30, the fund had 77.5% of its capital ($33.07 million) deployed across 11 private digital companies, including prediction market platform Polymarket, added during the reporting quarter.

While some funds buy up stakes in Ripple for pre-IPO gains, others go straight into XRP

The fact that the New York-traded fund pushed Ripple into first place, ahead of Kraken, coincided with a recorded uptick in interest in the company’s shares among more conservative players in the traditional market as well.

In August, the mutual fund Kinetics Internet Portfolio ($248 million in assets under management) disclosed in an SEC NPORT-P filing that it holds a stake of 1,875 Class A Ripple Labs shares valued at $246,000. This represents 0.1% of its assets and falls under Level 3, with unobservable value inputs. 

However, the very fact of acquiring shares of a private company through specialized OTC platforms points to a broader practice of integrating pre-IPO securities into mutual fund portfolios.

At the same time, other market participants continue preparing to go public: following custodian BitGo’s IPO in January (client growth of 26% year-over-year, to 5,833), Kraken (funded accounts up 42%, to 6.6 million) and Blockchain.com have both filed confidential IPO registration statements with the U.S. SEC.

In parallel, major financial institutions are building up their exposure to XRP, the token associated with Ripple, through regulated spot ETFs. August 13F filings recorded new positions from Goldman Sachs, which allocated $86.5 million across five XRP ETFs. Market maker Jane Street increased its stake in the Bitwise XRP ETF to 1.2 million shares, while the combined AUM of spot products reached $1.5 billion in August.

Against this backdrop, the SEC approved Evernorth Holdings’ Form S-4 for a SPAC merger and subsequent Nasdaq listing under the ticker XRPN — the fund manages a treasury of 473 million XRP.

Ripple Labs itself is diversifying its financial instruments — its Ripple Prime division closed a $275 million private bond placement rated BBB by KBRA and joined as a partner in the Clearpool credit fund to issue fintech loans denominated in the RLUSD stablecoin.

The overall picture shows that big capital has split its bets: some funds are buying up the company’s private shares for pre-IPO gains, while others are moving directly into regulated exchange-traded instruments built on its token.