London Asset Manager Takes $1B In Profit After Five Months Of Holding Bitcoin

What Happened: Ruffer, a London-based asset manager, has sold its entire Bitcoin position after investing around $600 million in November 2020.

According to a report from The Times, the company sold the last tranche of their investment in April, taking their total profit to just above $1.1 billion.

“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,” said Hamish Baillie, an investment director at Ruffer.

Why It Matters: Bitcoin touched its all-time of $64,863 in April shortly after crypto exchange Coinbase Global Inc COIN went public but has since fallen in value to trade around $37,000 for the better part of two weeks.

Interestingly, Ruffer’s reasons for selling its entire Bitcoin position and somewhat accurately timing the market come from a belief that younger people wouldn’t be spending so much time trading now that the lockdowns are ending.

According to Baillie, younger people in the U.S were investing the cash from stimulus checks distributed to them last year into assets such as Bitcoin.

Read also: Goldman Sachs Director Allegedly Leaves The Bank After Making Fortune From Dogecoin: Report

The investment director believes that financial institutions will continue to buy Bitcoin in the future, and it will soon become a mainstream asset, stating that concerns over the cryptocurrency’s adverse environmental impact were misguided.

“There is a lot of hyperbole and misinformation out there when it comes to bitcoin’s carbon footprint. Bitcoin uses less electricity than the gaming industry.”

Seeing as energy costs were the “biggest outgoings” of most Bitcoin miners, they were already incentivized to use renewable energy as a cheaper alternative to traditional sources, said Baillie.