Wisconsin has officially become the first state to buy bitcoin, according to a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The state’s authorities decided to risk with $161 million the state pension fund, Gizmodo notes.
They didn’t buy Bitcoin directly. Instead the opted to go with ETFs.
According to the SEC filing, the State of Wisconsin Investment Board bought 94,562 shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) worth about $98 million and $63 million of Grayscale’s spot Bitcoin ETF (GBTC).
Bitcoin ETFs were only approved by the SEC this past January. They allow institutional investors to invest in bitcoin without actually holding the crypto directly. ETFs were widely speculated as the means of Bitcoin adoption by non-geeky investors.
And it seems to be working out just perfectly, with many suggesting this could be just the start of other state pension funds investing in crypto.
The most famous large institutional investment in bitcoin started in El Salvador in 2021 when President Nayib Bukele purchased the crypto for his country and declared the cryptocurrency to be legal tender. El Salvador currently holds about 5,748 BTC worth roughly $360 million.
But bitcoin is an incredibly volatile asset. Those same holdings would have been worth about $155 million a year ago and there’s no guarantee bitcoin’s price will continue to climb steadily.