In “Defensive Move,” UK Investment Manager Moves From Gold To Bitcoin

Ruffer Investment Company Limited, an investment management firm based in the UK, has recently added Bitcoin (BTC) to its portfolio. This move highlights institutional players across the world, moving towards the world’s first digital asset. This comes by way of the LSE-listed firm disclosing its new Bitcoin strategy to the public.

Defending Against Devaluation of Fiats

This disclosure was done by way of a performance update and manager comment, which was posted on Tuesday. In this update, Ruffer explained that Bitcoin was integrated into the investment manager’s Multi-Strategies Fund, coming as a defensive move. This move is against fiat money and its continued devaluation, with Ruffer now holding around 2.5% of its assets in Bitcoin.

This move come in November, as the firm outright replaced some of its exposure to gold in order to have some more in Bitcoin. The firm described this new investment as a potent, albeit small, insurance against the world’s major currencies and their continued devaluation.

Ruffer explained that the company’s much larger investments in inflation-linked bonds and gold will now be diversified with Bitcoin, serving as a monetary and market risk hedge.

Institutional Players Choosing BTC Over Gold

Ruffer was founded back in 1994, and its report on the 30th of November shows that it boasts 20.3 billion euros worth of assets under management. This equates to around $27.2 billion, in turn. As it stands now, the firm has around 6,600 clients, primarily comprised of families, individuals, charities, and pension funds.

With Ruffer’s move, JPMorgan Chase’s recent call, one declaring that Bitcoin’s market share is eating that of gold’s, is only reinforced. Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, the lead of quantitative strategies at JPMorgan, explained that gold could face structural headwinds with this increase in Bitcoin adoption.

2020: A Year Of Chaos And Gain For Bitcoin

Bitcoin has seen a rather transformative, if chaotic year for 2020. The coin dropped down to major laws thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, halving its market cap at the time, but is now seeing it stronger than it was before the “Black Thursday” event. Major firms like PayPal, Grayscale, MassMutual, and Microstrategy are staking their bets on Bitcoin and will doubtlessly rewrite the digital asset narrative in their actions.

It’s believed by Erik Voorhees, the CEO of ShapeShift and all-around crypto pioneer, that the crypto space could gain the protection from these influential institutional players when it comes to government overreach. With major institutions already having skin in the game, governments will be far more reluctant to impose the more intrusive regulations.