London wealth manager Ruffer cashes out $1B profit in less than 6 months

Ruffer is open to further Bitcoin trades after gaining $1 billion in less than six months.

Asset manager Ruffer has profited by more than $1 billion in profit from a $600 million Bitcoin investment it made during November 2020.

“When the price doubled we took some profits for our clients in December and early January. We actively managed the position and by the time we sold the last tranche in April the total profit was slightly more than $1.1 billion.”

Ruffer was one of the first managers of the firm to purchase BTC for an unusual short-term investment. At the time of the investment, the price for Bitcoin cleared up $15,000 and pushed for a test of the then all-time highs of nearly $20,000 established in 2017.

The investment director attributed Bitcoin’s late 2020 parabolic price rally to the pandemic lockdown and stimulus payouts in the United States. He said the corporation liquidated its holdings partly because younger investors wouldn’t spend as long investing in crypto now that lockdowns are ending stop.

The firm has shifted its profits to other “protective” assets, such as inflation-related government bonds, from BTC trade. However, Baillie is confident that major financial institutions, including Ruffer and Goldman Sachs, will continue to buy Bitcoin, stating that another purchase is “certainly not off the menu:”

“If you have a multi-asset strategy then things that behave in different ways are really helpful. There’s no point being multi-asset if all your different assets move with the same dynamics.”

Ruffer is not the only large financial institution that has been dabbling in crypto, with data from Bitcointreasuries.org suggesting that 36 publicly traded companies currently hold BTC on their balance sheet.

Only six or 16% of publicly traded firms invested in Bitcoin are currently down on their position, including Nexon, Meitu, and Seetee. The top three holders — MicroStrategy, Tesla, and Square — are sitting on $5.2 billion worth of BTC between them.