Fund manager Bill Miller, who is well known for beating the S&P 500 Index for 15 years when he ran Legg Mason Capital Management has high hopes for bitcoin.
So much so, in fact, that he’s included it in his own personal portfolio, according to Bloomberg.
Miller joins an ever-increasing number of big names in the finance industry to pick up bitcoin, such as Michael Novogratz, principal at the Fortress Investment Group (which has its own dealings with bitcoin).
“Bitcoin is like making a venture bet,” said Miller in an interview on Bloomberg’s ‘Surveillance’ television programming. “The potential return is huge.”
For some, the return has already been huge. Many early adopters of the digital currency who mined or bought in before bitcoin became widely-known have made a killing, when the price per unit spiked last April to over $200 — and later over $1000 toward the end of the year.
Miller says bitcoin is “an interesting intellectual and technological experiment,” including that he may expand bitcoin purchases to the funds he manages “when Bloomberg can get a quote on it and it can be securely stored.”
With recent reports that SecondMarket is planning to open up their Bitcoin Investment Trust to everybody (as opposed to institutional investors), the use of bitcoin as an investment vehicle is likely to continue it’s exponential expansion over the next few months.
Whether or not the returns turn out to be “huge”, as Miller speculates, is something that will be proven with time. [source: Bloomberg]
