Digital tulip or new asset class? Bitcoin s bid to go mainstream
13 Feb, 2021 06:00 PM
9 minutes to read
SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk at an event in Berlin on December 1, 2020. Photo / Getty
SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk at an event in Berlin on December 1, 2020. Photo / Getty
Financial Times
By: Robin Wigglesworth and Eva Szalay
Elon Musk is not like most multibillionaires. The first oblique hint that Tesla s eccentric chief executive was contemplating another audacious, market-shaking move came via a risqué, Yuletide social media message.
Read More On December 20, Musk tweeted a cartoon image depicting himself as a devout monk trying to live a normal productive life , gazing at a woman in a provocative pose with bitcoin plastered over her posterior.
Gamestop trading frenzy fuels fears of next equity bubble
Ruffer warns of ‘over-exuberant’ markets but other investors think stocks have further to climb
Michael Rivera via Wikimedia Commons
The flood of retail investors piling into markets like the Redditors behind the Gamestop mania has been described as a “harbinger of over-exuberant markets” and evidence of potential equity bubbles brewing.
Down on its luck video game retailer Gamestop took the investment industry by storm at the end of January after an army of amateur traders on Reddit targeted the stock, with the intent of sending its shares “to the moon” and letting Wall Street have it. What followed was a frenetic week of trading which saw other beaten up and shorted stocks US cinema chain AMC and out of fashion mobile phone company Blackberry take off.
I think it has become,” said Compton Mackenzie, “if I may say so, a kind of folk tale. Rather like Dick Whittington or Aladdin or something. Because it goes on and on… that’s the fantastic thing.” This was how the writer, whose novel Whisky Galore went a long way towards creating that folk tale and exporting it, via a classic Alexander Mackendrick Ealing comedy, to the world, described the story of the wrecking and plundering of the SS Politician when it was lost off Eriskay. It’s been 80 years since the vessel ran aground and spilled the contents of its Hold Number 5 – not just 28,000 bottles of whisky but also £290,000 Jamaican ten-shilling notes (worth around £3 million now) – and it’s a folk legend that keeps on growing and giving.
Ruffer Investment Rakes In $750M Profit from Bitcoin Investment
Last Updated: 03 February 2021
Ruffer Investments, the British asset management firm, made quite a splash in the crypto industry last year, joining the ranks of institutional investors to enter the market. The firm has now cashed out partially, scoring a significant windfall thanks to Bitcoin’s recent performance.
Ruffer’s Bitcoin Bet Pays Off
This week, Ruffer Investments published its annual review on market performances, confirming that it had sold off some of its Bitcoin holdings. The company, which announced that it had invested 2.5 percent of its $27.5 billion Multi Strategies Fund in December 2020, is now smiling to the bank.