Bitcoiners have long harped on bitcoin’s viability as a global hedge asset like gold, but it’s never had the opportunity to prove itself.
U.K.-based Ruffer Investment Company announced to shareholders today that it has allocated about 2.5 percent of its portfolio to bitcoin, according to Investegate. In a correspondence with CoinDesk's Zack Voell, the firm upped that percentage figure, indicating that "Ruffer's exposure to bitcoin currently totals around £550m, equivalent to around 2.7% of the firm's assets under management." That is equivalent to more than $740 million.
In the announcement, Ruffer cited that “this is primarily a defensive move, one made in November after reducing the company's exposure to gold.”
It’s likely that Ruffer Investment Co. has made this allocation because a small position in bitcoin can serve as a potent insurance policy against the continuing devaluation of the world's major currencies, because bitcoin diversifies the company's (much larger) investments in gold and inflation-linked bonds and because bitcoin acts as a hedge to some of the monetary and market risks that Ruffer Investment Co. sees.
Bitcoiners have long been speculating that bitcoin would start being recognized as an allocation alongside gold and that entities would diversify away from gold into bitcoin.
In a recent episode of the “Bitcoin Magazine Podcast,” economist Lyn Alden cited that bitcoin is catching on with gold investors.
This move by Ruffer Investment Co, and many others, like MicroStrategy and MassMutual, further illustrates bitcoin’s advancement as a treasury asset and credibly neutral store of value.