Fortress Discloses a Paper Loss on Bitcoin

The Fortress Investment Group has reported a paper loss of $3.7 million from investments in Bitcoin, the first large public company to disclose a stake in the volatile virtual currency.

Fortress said it bought $20 million worth of Bitcoin in 2013, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.

As of Dec. 31, that stake was worth less than $17 million.

Executives at Fortress have expressed interest in Bitcoin for months, but it has been unclear just how the company might be involved with it.

Ripple Labs, a budding online Bitcoin payment system, has previously disclosed investment from Pantera Capital, which includes money from executives at Fortress.

The Fortress filing did not detail the exact nature of its virtual currency investment in its filing on Thursday, and a spokesman for Fortress could not be immediately reached for comment.

Bitcoin, which exists only as computer code, has thus far circumvented the traditional financial system. That has posed a challenge for regulators, which now face increased pressure in the wake of the collapse of Mt. Gox, one of the earliest and at one point largest Bitcoin exchanges.

Fortress’s investment in Bitcoin represents a tiny fraction of the firm’s nearly $70 billion under management. But its stake could encourage interest in an industry that has not yet gained a foothold with Wall Street or the general economy.

“This makes it more legitimate for the hedge funds to buy, and easier, and provide the path for any other public company to report it,” said Gil Luria, a managing director at Wedbush Securities. “Now there’s a bleuprint for how to go through reporting ownership of Bitcoin in a public S.E.C. filing.”

Banks have largely shied away from Bitcoin because of its volatility and lack of regulation. That has fueled Bitcoin’s instability, and the price has fluctuated wildly since the currency was introduced in 2009.

But venture capital firms and other established entrepreneurs have begun to back new Bitcoin companies with more sophisticated infrastructure and technology. That’s fueled some hopes that Bitcoin could gain more of a foothold in the mainstream.

“I think the question now is whether they’re going to market this as a product to their investors,” Mr. Luria said of Fortress’s investment. “I think that would be the next step I would expect from them.”