Christopher Wood is the Global Head for Equity at Jefferies. He has reduced his position in gold to expand his investment in the world’s largest cryptocurrency.

Wood believes traditional financial institutions such as banks need to focus on Blockchain and encourage it instead of anticipating its demise.

This isn’t the first time Wood is forfeiting gold for the sake of Bitcoin. Wood reduced the amount of gold in his asset allocation to USD-based pensions funds by 50% to 45%, as a result.

Wood was not always a fan. Wood had avoided investing in crypto assets due to security issues. He has now had an epiphany, just as most institutional players. Although he remains bullish about the yellow metal, his view is that it would be foolish to ignore the rise of Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies.

According to the Economic Times, Jefferies presented a note to its investors suggesting that if blockchain technology manages to infiltrate the conventional finance space by bypassing the need of third parties and intermediaries, it could also lead to the fall of the “dollar paper standard.”

Wood said BTC was like gold but admitted the US has had a disappointing performance, particularly with negative US rates. He believes this is why the ETF’s launch in China was so much anticipated. It also highlights the importance of making adjustments to the global portfolio to US-dollar-nominated pension funds.

Wood, however, is still not considering adding to his portfolio in spite of his renewed position on Bitcoin. The exec reiterated his previous position when it came to Ethereum, establishing that he had no plan to include ETH in any pension fund portfolio as it is not a “store of value” asset. He did however state that the most popular altcoin could outperform Bitcoin within the next few years.

The current assets in the exec’s portfolio are 10% BTC exposure, 40% gold, 30% Asian (excluding Japan) equities, and 20% unhedged gold mining stocks.

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