Back in October, Fortress CIO Michael Novogratz alluded to his firm's growing interest in the cryptocurrency, saying, "Put a little money in Bitcoin...Come back in a few years and it's going to be worth a lot."
It now seems Fortress is putting its $58 billion assets-under-management where its mouth is.
"... The Fortress effort will be something like an unlisted currency ETF (similar to [SecondMarket's] Bitcoin Investment Trust), with Fortress also perhaps raising a separate vehicle to back Bitcoin-related startups. And there likely is some relationship to a new Bitcoin-related fund raised by Pantera Capital, a San Francisco-based hedge fund whose clients are known to include several Fortress executives."
The aforementioned SecondMarket was the first major firm to launch a major Bitcoin investment fund (we're not counting the Winklevoss' Bitcoin ETF, which does not yet officially exist). A few weeks ago, SecondMarket founder and CEO Barry Silbert predicted 2014 would be "the year of Wall Street and Bitcoin."
It seems to be shaking out that way.