British asset management giant Ruffer sold some BTC and made a net profit of $650 million, but still holds $700 million in BTC

Key points:

• Ruffer has made more than $750 million in profits from his Bitcoin investments and has now cashed out $650 million.

• The value of its cryptocurrency holdings has more than doubled since November.

• The company still has about $700 million in Bitcoin funding allocated.

Ruffer Investment Company has sold $650 million worth of cryptocurrencies after the value of its initial investment surged over the past few months, The Telegraph reported.

The London-based firm, which manages £20.3 billion ($27.3 billion) in assets, allocated 2.5% of its multi-strategy fund to bitcoin in November 2020.

The firm also has exposure to Bitcoin through two proxy holdings, MicroStrategy and Galaxy Digital, according to its year-end review.

“We were surprised at how well it was executed and how quickly it was executed. We didn’t expect the fireworks to go off immediately,” Ruffer investment director Duncan MacInnes told The Telegraph.

According to MacInnes, the company decided to take out the amount it initially invested, netting a $650 million profit, and is now leaving the rest in Bitcoin. “We have about $700 million left, and overall we’re up $750 million right now,” he said.

Duncan MacInnes claimed that the company has been watching the price performance of Bitcoin for several years. Although it was "very skeptical" about Bitcoin in 2017, it saw a sharp change in the economic landscape in 2020, and for institutional investors, "Bitcoin is becoming an alternative safe-haven asset."

“We’re seeing negative interest rates and falling bond yields everywhere. We’ve seen the war on cash intensify because of the pandemic. At the same time, everything is going digital, and our lives are much more digital than they were a year ago,” MacInnes added.

Ruffer Investment is one of the major companies on the list of traditional financial institutions that continue to pile into the Bitcoin market, with the likes of MicroStrategy making headlines in recent months, having purchased another $10 million just yesterday.