Billionaire Fund Manager Bill Miller Holds 50% Of His Wealth In Bitcoin
Bill Miller, a fund manager and billionaire, recently revealed that crypto now represent 50% of his personal assets.
Miller, who became famous for beating the S&P 500 index for a record-breaking 15 years in a row from 1991-2005 as a fund manager at Legg Mason, has previously held large positions in bitcoin for funds that he managed, but his revelation about his personal portfolio was new.
According to Miller he personally started buying bitcoin when it was price at around $200 back in 2014 after hearing a talk by Wences Casares, known as the “Patient Zero” of bitcoin for introducing it to Silicon Valley circles, at the annual Sun Valley media and tech conference.
Miller acquired some more bitcoin over time, and then didn’t buy it for years, until last year when the price hit new highs and then started to fall sharply, and he thought it was a good time to buy the dip.
The billionaire started buying BTC again at $30,000, down from its high of just under $69,000, reasoning that there were a lot more people using it, also venture capitalists and others were now investing in it.
Miller pointed out that a part of his personal bitcoin investments was in companies tied closely to its price, such as bitcoin miner Stronghold Digital (SDIG) and software company MicroStrategy (MSTR), which holds billions of dollars’ worth of bitcoin on its balance sheet.
According to Miller, bitcoin is best referred to as “digital gold” with a strictly limited supply and that he’s only recently allowed himself to be called a “bitcoin bull” rather than just a “bitcoin observer” because he feels that it’s now developed into a world-changing technology.
Regardless of his own massively concentrated position, Miller’s advice for average investors is to put 1% of their net worth in bitcoin.
He explains:
“If you put 1% of your portfolio in it for diversification, even if it goes to zero, which I think is highly improbable, but of course possible, you can always afford to lose 1%.”
His main rationale for that advice is that bitcoin represents a unique investment.
“I think the average investor should ask himself or herself, what do you have in your portfolio that has that kind of track record – number one, is very, very under-penetrated; can provide a service of insurance against financial catastrophe that no one else can provide and can go up 10 times or 50 times? The answer is: nothing.”
