Highly regarded billionaire fund manager Bill Miller, who has consistently made large returns over the past 15 years, has allocated 30 percent of his $154 million fund in bitcoin.

After resigning from his position at $3.65 billion investment management firm Legg Mason, Miller created his own investment firm, Miller Value Partners. Miller’s investment firm, which oversees $2.3 billion in assets, operates a $154 million hedge fund called MVP 1, which has recorded a 72.5 percent year-to-date gain, according to Jason Zweig of the Wall Street Journal.

Miller’s Fund Increased Bitcoin Holdings From 5% to 30%

Miller Value Partners and its MVP 1 fund allocated around five percent of its capital in bitcoin last year. Within the past 12 months, Miller increased bitcoin holdings of MVP from five percent to 30 percent, considering the exponential growth rate of bitcoin in terms of user base, trading volume, liquidity, and adoption.

In a letter sent to MVP 1 clients obtained by the WSJ, Miller revealed that bitcoins held by the fund were purchased at an average price of $350. That means, the MVP 1 fund recorded a 17-fold increase in the investments it has made in bitcoin.

“My view on bitcoin is that it is a technological experiment that may or may not prove to have any long lasting value. Bitcoin has a market capitalization greater than 90% of the companies in the S&P 500, but it still might fail. I don’t know and neither does anyone else, no matter how certain they are of their opinion,” said Miller.

In contrast to most billionaire hedge fund investors with the exception of a few including Mike Novogratz, Miller has a strong grasp of bitcoin. He understands the structure, purpose, and decentralized nature of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the market.

Can Other Cryptocurrencies Surpass Bitcoin in Value?

But, Miller still believes that bitcoin is experimental to an extent, and whether new cryptocurrencies or technologies more sophisticated than bitcoin could surpass the value of bitcoin in the long-term remains unclear.

There are many investors in the market that share a contrasting viewpoint to Miller. Any advantages of other cryptocurrencies can be adopted bitcoin through open-source development to further improve the technology behind bitcoin, its capacity, and privacy measures. For instance, recently, Ethereum implemented ZK-SNARKs, a cryptographic system employed by anonymous cryptocurrency Zcash, to enhance the privacy measures of the public Ethereum blockchain network.

Bitcoin could utilize a similar strategy in the future and given that it has network effect over the market, it can improve its technological aspects through active and efficient development.

As bitcoin investor and Atlanta Digital Currency Fund partner Alistair Milne noted:

“Bitcoin is the reserve currency of the ‘crypto’ world. In the past 24hrs over half a billion USD of (non-fiat) tokens were traded vs BTC. Bitcoin’s market is deeper than any other by a country mile. No new token can compete with that,” said Milne.