According to a report by The Sunday Times, Ruffer investment management company made a $1.1 billion profit in five months from bitcoin. Last year in November, Ruffer bought BTC for 600 million U.S. dollars. The company made its bitcoin purchase Via One River digital and Coinbase.
Ruffer investment director said, the firm sold its Bitcoin because younger people would not be spending so much time trading now that the lockdowns are ending, according to the report.
According to Hamish Baillie, investment director at Ruffer, “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 becomes the first manager to buy bitcoin in what was a rare short-term investment for the company. In November, the company invested 2.5% of its $27 billion portfolios into bitcoin. It took profit earlier this year as cryptocurrency more than doubled to around $40,000.
In February, co-manager of Ruffer investment Duncan MacInnes said that “We still have around $700 million left in and currently up by $750 million profit overall.”
Baillie added, “If you have a multi-asset strategy then thing that behave in different ways is really helpful. There’s no point being multi-asset if all your different assets move with the same dynamics.”
To date, Bitcoin got major criticism for its high amount of energy consumption. That’s why Tesla discontinued its services allowing people to buy electric cars using bitcoin.
According to Baillie, these concerns are overblown. He confirmed that Ruffer sold Bitcoin because of “hyperbole and misinformation”. Baillie said. “Bitcoin uses less electricity than the gaming industry.”
