British Investment Firm Puts 2.5% of $620M Fund Into Bitcoin

On Tuesday, Ruffer Investment Company revealed in an investor letter that it has allocated "around 2.5%" of its fund's portfolio to Bitcoin:

One recent addition, via one of the specialist managers appointed within the Ruffer Multi-Strategies Fund, has been bitcoin. This is primarily a defensive move, one made in November after reducing the company's exposure to gold. The exposure to bitcoin is currently equivalent to around 2.5% of the portfolio.

With $620 million in the Ruffer Multi-Strategies Fund, this means the portfolio now contains around $15 million worth of bitcoin. Ruffer's parent company holds over $20 billion in assets under management, though the Bitcoin allocation, according to Ruffer, only pertains to this specific portfolio. 

Bitcoin joins the fund's other investments, which include holdings in Tesco, Walt Disney, Royal Dutch Shell, American Express, gold, pound sterling, and U.S. and U.K. Treasury bonds.

The firm wrote in its investment letter that it sees Bitcoin as a "potent insurance policy against the continuing devaluation of the world's major currencies." 

While comparably small, this move is the latest in a series of attempts by Wall Street investors to embrace cryptocurrency.

As reported by the BTC Times, just last week American life insurance company MassMutual deployed $100 million into bitcoin. The company was joined by  "other return-hungry insurance companies," though those companies were not named. 

Economist and industry analyst Alex Krüger commented on the recent news regarding Ruffer by highlighting that these investors are in Bitcoin for the long haul:

"Traditional asset managers are not buying bitcoin to dump after a short period of time. They represent the herd we've been talking about for years."