British fund manager Ruffer Investment Management last month made a bet on bitcoin now worth around £550m ($745m), a spokesman for the company told Reuters, in one of the largest signals of rising institutional interest in the digital currency this year.
The allocation by Ruffer, which managed £20.3bn ($27.3bn) in assets at end-November on behalf of more than 6,500 investors globally, “acts as a hedge to some of the risks that we see in a fragile monetary system and distorted financial markets,” the spokesman said via email.
The allocation was made through a third-party manager, and represents around 2.7% of Ruffer’s total assets, he added.
