The UK-based Ruffer Investment Company Limited (“Ruffer”) has revealed in a new report that its exposure to bitcoin accounts for about 3% of its entire portfolio of around $29 billion, which would mean its BTC exposure is worth around $800 million.
According to the firm’s Investment Manager’s Review for the period ending Dec. 31, it has bitcoin exposure via its Ruffer Multi Strategies Fund and via two proxy equities that invested in the flagship cryptocurrency: MicroStrategy and Galaxy Digital. The document reads:
At the period end the combined exposure of these was just over 3%. In the short period since investing both stocks are up more than 100% and bitcoin is up 90%.
The firm’s allocation to BTC should represent around $861 million of its portfolio, taking into account the 3% figure. Ruffer revealed it’s slightly above 3%, but according to Bitcoin.com a spokesperson said it does not recognize a $1.4 billion allocation like some news outlets reported.
The investment firm added it has a history of “using unconventional protections” in its portfolio, and that bitcoin and the equities that invested in BTC are another example of these protections. The small allocation, it says, was made into “an idiosyncratic asset class” the firm believes “brings something different” to its portfolio.
It adds that zero interest rates have seen the investment world become “ desperate for new safe-havens and uncorrelated assets. Ruffer Investment noted it believes it is “relatively early to this, at the foothills of a long trend of institutional adoption and financialisation of bitcoin.”
It added:
Think of bitcoin’s bad reputation as a risk premium – as we move through the process of normalisation, regulation, and institutionalisation, the compression of this premium can have a dramatic effect on the price. If we are wrong, bitcoin will return to the shadows and we will lose money – this explains why we have kept the position size small but meaningful.
Earlier this month Jonathan Ruffer, Chairman of Ruffer Investment, revealed the firm has done “much work on assessing the danger” of investing in bitcoin and has been “watching it for a longish time.” Per Ruffer’s words, bitcoin is a “unique beast as an emerging store of value.”
He added it is a “seemingly non-sensical asset – but one that makes absolute sense for how we see the world.”
Featured image via Pixabay.
