Bill Miller Net Worth, Crypto and NFT Investments

Bill Miller’s story as a billionaire is quite inspiring. He made his name as a successful fund manager. He’s famous for beating the S&P 500 consecutively for 15 years. He served in various capacities with Legg Mason Capital Management, Legg Mason Opportunity Trust Mutual Fund, and Legg Mason Capital Management Value Trust. Bill Miller started growing his net worth as a fund manager.

However, the financial crisis of 2008 wiped out a significant portion of his wealth. He was able to bounce back from this setback due to his investment in Amazon and Bitcoin. Bill Miller’s investments in the afore-listed assets aided his journey back into the billionaires league. Presently, the net worth of Bill Miller is estimated to be around $1.4 billion.

Certainly, investments in Amazon and Bitcoin made up a significant part of the net worth of Bill Miller. Alongside his investment in Bitcoin, Bill Miller is a strong advocate of BTC. Due to that, he has made numerous predictions regarding the future of the virtual coin.

It is worth mentioning that Bill Miller is famous for his distinct approach as an investor. He believes that “any stock can be a value stock if it trades at a discount to its intrinsic value”. He also spoke about the possibility of airline stocks growing in recent times. Aside from being a prominent investor, Bill Miller is well-known for his charitable deeds. He has donated more than $125 million to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University.

Bill Miller’s Net Worth from 2020-2023

Early Life

Born as William H. Miller III in 1950, in Laurinburg, North Carolina. Bill Miller doesn’t have a launchpad to succeed like many other billionaires of his generation. His father worked as a terminal manager for a trucking company. His educational journey saw him attend Miami Palmetto Senior High School. He graduated in 1968.

Thereafter, he bagged a degree in economics from Washington and Lee University in 1972. Bill Miller joined the military that same year. He served in the military for three years. During his time there, he rose to the ranks of Captain. While at the military, Bill Miller was outstanding. At a time, he received the Army Commendation Medal for meritorious service while assigned to the 502d U.S. Army Security Agency Company.

Upon leaving the military, Bill Miller continued on his academic journey. He enrolled for a Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. During this period, Bill Miller worked as a part-time accountant.

However, his exposure to stock trading can be traced down to his father. Bill Miller at the young age of 9 learned stock trading from his father. The genesis of his career started with the J.E. Baker Company. The company is a manufacturing firm. Miller worked there as a treasurer.

Legg Mason Capital

In 1981, he joined Legg Mason Capital Management as a security analyst. There, he gained qualifications to become a chartered financial analyst. Miller made a name for himself at Legg Mason by pulling a genius’s feet. Between 1991 to 2005, he beat the S&P 500 index for 15 years straight. At a time when Bill Miller spoke about the streak, he referred to it as an accident of the calendar. He said, “If the year ended in different months it wouldn’t be there and at some point, the mathematics will hit us.” Bill Miller said luck played a role in the success. He said, “Well, maybe it’s not 100% luck, maybe 95% luck.”

In 2007, he became the Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of the firm. At that time, Miller was saddled with the responsibility of running the Legg Mason value trust mutual fund. In 2012, he handed over the Value Trust to Sam Peters, before leaving the firm in 2016.

Highlights of some prominent occurrences that took place during Bill Miller’s time at the firm include how Legg Mason sold its stock brokerage subsidiary to Raymond James Financial in 2002 and many more. Three years later, the firm became the 5th largest money management firm in the U.S after it transferred its Private Client and Capital Markets business to Citigroup. In return, Legg Mason received Citigroup’s asset management business in a $3.7 billion transaction.

Before the 2008 financial crisis, Mark R. Fetting became CEO of the company, succeeding Raymond A. “Chip” Mason. The change of CEO took place in January of that year. By May, Legg Mason recorded its first quarterly loss as a public company. Barely a year later, the firm resolved to move its headquarters to Inner Harbor East, Baltimore.

As a result of the financial crisis, Legg Mason laid off 350 members of staff in 2010. While struggling with its finances, Legg Mason cancelled all sports sponsorship in a bid to reduce its expenditures. A year later, Franklin Templeton Investments acquired Legg Mason for $4.5 billion.

Several Financial Mistakes that almost ruined Bill Miller

Despite his outstanding feat at Legg Mason, Bill Miller made a huge mistake that proved costly. Before the financial crisis in 2008, Bill Miller placed large leveraged bets on Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac, and other stocks that had been particularly hard hit. He believed that the Federal Reserve would backstop struggling institutions.

Things didn’t turn out as planned and the move backfired. The Legg Mason value trust mutual fund lost 55% of its value. Consequently, investors abandoned him and they withdrew their assets under his management. Before making the move, assets under the management of Bill Miller were worth around $77 billion.

As they withdrew the funds, the worth of assets under his management shranked. It went as low as $800 million. Personally, Bill Miller suffered more than most of the investors. Then, the net worth of Bill Miller went down by 90% in a few months.

Additionally, he made another mistake in 2018 when he sold his stakes in GameStop. He made these shots at a period when the firm recorded heavy losses. Within 12 months, GameStop lost $275 million. The heavy loss triggered a freefall in the stock of the firm.

Later, Bill Miller decided to short his position on GameStop. After making the decision, things turned around for the firm. Then, reports indicated that the stake of Bill Miller in the organization could have been worth $800 million when things changed for good.

Investment Portfolio

Our findings into Bill Miller’s investment portfolio indicate that he’s one of the largest shareholders of Amazon after Jeff Beso and MacKenzie Scott. He began investing in Amazon when the company went public in 1997. Gradually, Bill Miller raised his stake in the firm. The most famous period when he added more to his Amazon stake was during the dot com bubble burst.

Though, at times, the investor resorted to selling his stake in the company. During the financial crisis of 2008, Bill Miller sold a portion of his stakes in Amazon. The stake in Amazon contributed significantly to the net worth of Bill Miller. As at November 2008, Amazon stock was below $40 per share. Over the years, the value of the firm’s stock has grown massively.

More so, Bill Miller has a stake in Canadian multinational specialty pharmaceutical company, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. Presently, the firm is known as Bausch Health Companies Inc. It focuses on the development, manufacturing, and marketing of pharmaceutical products and branded generic drugs. Drugs produced by Valeant Pharmaceuticals are meant to combat skin diseases, gastrointestinal disorders, eye health, and neurology.

The firm was founded in 1959 with its headquarters in Laval, Quebec, Canada. As of 2021, the firm has a workforce of 19,600 employees. In 2022, the firm recorded a revenue worth $8.12 billion.

As a prominent investor, Bill Miller spread his investment portfolio across various stocks, though 50% of his wealth is in BTC. As at when energy prices soared, Bill Miller said oil stocks would be very cheap. In the spring of 2021, he went overweight on oil stocks.

Is Bill Miller Pro Bitcoin?

Bill Miller has always been bullish about Bitcoin. In spite of the 2022 downturn that plunged the crypto to its lowest low, the mutual fund manager did not stop voicing his support for BTC. He has no doubt in the potential of the crypto to soar as a legitimate store of value. It is worth mentioning that Bill Miller, has over time, been able to encourage and drive the adoption of BTC, particularly among his followers. He leverages his influence to hype the crypto. Recall that Miller is notable for his remarkable track record, knowledge of financial markets and valuable perspectives about investments. By virtue of this, people look up to him for financial advice.

Miller is a believer in the dominance of Bitcoin over all other digital assets. In one of his recent interviews, he justified his stance. According to him, Bitcoin is ahead of other cryptocurrencies because it is not controlled or backed by anyone. Meanwhile, other digital assets, according to him, are backed by venture capitalists. Also, he is optimistic in the capacity of BTC to become a new form of money, thereby rendering other digital assets irrelevant.

In 2022, Bill Miller reacted to comments from Berkshire Hathaway’s Buffett and Charlie Munger criticizing Bitcoin. Buffet, 91, had earlier described BTC as an unproductive asset, saying the crypto does not produce anything tangible. Reacting to the comment, Miller said Buffet is old and probably not used to embracing new technologies. Miller said; “he said that bitcoin is a non-productive asset and therefore he can’t value it. Fair enough. If the only thing that you think you can value are productive assets, then no one’s making you buy it, right? So ignore it.”

Miller has, over time, proven to understand the structure, purpose and capability of Bitcoin. At a time, he said “my view on bitcoin is that it is a technological experiment that may or may not prove to have any long lasting value. Bitcoin has a market capitalization greater than 90% of the companies in the S&P 500, but it still might fail. I don’t know and neither does anyone else, no matter how certain they are of their opinion.” Meanwhile, he doubted if any other crypto can surpass the market value of BTC in the future.

A correction from an over exuberant 2017, similar to what happened to internet stocks from ‘99 thru ‘02. AMZN went down 95pctfrom the high back then, but still turned out fine. Bitcoin is a technological experiment that might work or might fail. We should know which in 5-10yrs

— Bill Miller (@B3_MillerValue) January 2, 2019

In 2020, the hedge fund manager publicly recommended Bitcoin investments to his followers. He said; “I strongly recommend Bitcoin. It’s the single best performing asset class in the last year, five-year and 10-year periods.” According to Miller, Bitcoin is less risky owing to the fact that it is now established. He boasted that the risk of Bitcoin going to zero is extremely low because “there’s been huge amounts of venture capital money that’s gone into it. All the big banks are getting involved with it. I’m willing to over the waterfall with this one.”

Crypto and NFT Holdings of Bill Miller

As a staunch supporter of Bitcoin, Bill Miller holds a huge amount of the token in his portfolio. At the moment, no credible source has been able to provide any accurate or exact value of Bitcoin in Miller’s portfolio. But, we rely on his May 2022 statement where he confirmed that he holds a lot of Bitcoin.

According to Miller, the cryptocurrency selloff at that time did not influence him to sell his holdings. In his comment, the investment manager said; “If people have lost a lot of money in crypto, they have been speculating on the stuff they don’t know anything about, especially if they are surprised to have lost money because most of the ICOs [initial coin offerings] that came around in 2017 have gone to zero.”

In an interview, Miller said he won’t be surprised if Bitcoin drops in value owing to its volatility. But, the hedge fund manager said “I would be grim because I own a lot of it.” This thus confirms that Bill Miller owns a significant amount of the token, thereby making the list of famous Bitcoin investors across the globe. Bill Miller grew his net worth through his investment in BTC. According to our findings, more than 30% of his net worth is in the largest crypto by market cap.

We traced the the genesis of Miller’s investment in Bitcoin to early 2013. Then, the crypto traded within $200 to $300 per coin. At that time, he bought a huge portion of the token, becoming one of its earliest investors. Ever since, the token saw a massive upsurge in its value to trade around thousands of dollars.

Certainly, the big rise in the value of the token means a big gain for Bill Miller, thereby contributing to his net worth. Also, the massive gain from the investment positioned Miller as one of the Bitcoin Billionaires across the globe.

Although, it is worth mentioning that Bill Miller did not grow his net worth with BTC investment alone. He is one of the earliest investors in Amazon, a development which certainly impacted his wealth. According to our findings, he invested in Amazon as early as 1977 and has now emerged as the largest individual shareholder of the firm.

Despite holding the largest shares in Amazon, Bill Miller holds larger Bitcoin assets, which thus indicates that the investment contributed more to his net worth. However, at the moment, there are no indications that Bill Miller holds other digital assets, including NFTs in his portfolio.

Apart from his personal investment in Bitcoin, his investment firm, Miller Value Partners is notable for its investment in the token. At the earliest period of Bitcoin, the firm held at least 5% of its capital in it. At time time, the firm purchased the token as low as $350.

The massive surge in the value of Bitcoin translated into a big gain for the investment firm, and his founder Bill Miller, thereby contributing to his net worth. Also, the growing popularity of the token also encouraged the firm to increase its Bitcoin holdings to 30%, thereby becoming one of the largest institutional holders of Bitcoin.

Bill Miller’s Net Worth – Our Verdict

We have been able to establish the net worth of Bill Miller, with vital emphases on his investment portfolios. Our findings show that Bill Miller grew his net worth through his early investments in Amazon shares and Bitcoin. His investment in Amazon could be traced to 1977 when the company went public.

Despite selling some of his shares in 2008, the hedge fund manager is still the largest individual shareholder in the firm. The massive rise in the value of the shares in the past few years certainly impacted Miller’s wealth.

As for his Bitcoin investment, he started at a time the coin was trading at $200 to $300. Miller has always been bullish about BTC, believing in the potential of the token to grow ten folds. Certainly, his investment in Bitcoin yielded huge dividends as the token grew to a stunning thousand of dollars price range.

Our findings confirm Bitcoin to be the major driver of the net worth of Bill Miller. This is because the value of his investment in the crypto surpasses his shares in Amazon. Miller has never hidden his admiration for Bitcoin. He believes the crypto has no competition and doubts if any other digital assets, including Ethereum can match the achievements of BTC in the future.

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