Bill Miller, a well-known American billionaire investor and stock manager, has invested about half of his portfolio in bitcoin and related instruments. This was announced by the former chairman of Legg Mason Capital Management during the Wealthtrack podcast.
Miller stated that he no longer considers himself an "observer" in the bitcoin space and adheres to bullish expectations regarding the first cryptocurrency, despite a shaky start to the year. In addition to bitcoin, the cryptocurrency part of its portfolio consists of investments in major industry participants, including MicroStrategy and the mining company Stronghold Digital Mining. The remaining part of the billionaire's assets is almost entirely concentrated in Amazon shares, which helped him restore his fortune after the 2008 financial crisis.
Miller bought the first bitcoins at a rate of about $200 in 2014 and gradually added to the position as he approached $ 500, but then left investing in cryptocurrency for several years. Last year, Miller started investing in bitcoin again when his rate rolled back from $66,000 to $30,000.
"I started buying about $30,000 again, starting from the fact that a lot more people started using it, a lot more money started coming from the world of venture capital. I bought a lot in the range of about $30,000," he said during a recent interview.
The investor continues to consider bitcoin as an "insurance in case of a financial catastrophe", as well as a financial mechanism with the potential to bypass gold. He drew a parallel with precious metals, recalling how the Roosevelt administration confiscated gold from the population in the 30s, but cryptocurrencies are much more reliable in this sense.
At the same time, Miller warned that bitcoin can be a "very dangerous" asset for short-term traders, and recommended that individual investors invest at least 1% of their capital in it.:
"I think every investor should ask himself what is in his portfolio with a similar story. Bitcoin is extremely immune, can play the role of insurance against financial disaster and is able to rise 10-50 times. Answer: there is no other such asset."
Miller disagrees with Warren Buffett, who called bitcoin "rat poison squared." He noted that in the past people could not imagine how the Internet is able to influence the life of society, but now it is obvious. It's the same with bitcoin: the real consequences will become clear only in the future.
At the same time, the investor supports Buffett's opinion that fear is able to cover market participants at one moment, but confidence returns gradually. From these positions, he views the current decline of bitcoin as "a great opportunity to enter."