Funds managed by Houston Firefighters’ Relief and Retirement have invested $25 million each in bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).
Asset management Stone Ridge invested through its cryptocurrency-focused subsidiary NYDIG. To quote Ajit Singh, the fund’s chief investment officer, cryptocurrencies are “another tool to control my risk”. This is also highlighting their “good projected return” and “minimal correlation to any other asset class,” according to Bloomberg.
Government pension funds, according to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, are now responsible for managing nearly $5.5 trillion in assets.
📈 Houston Pension Fund Invests Bitcoin and Ether
As a result of the pension fund’s decision, the price of bitcoin has risen to an all-time high above the $67,000 mark. This is possibly due to the filing of the first bitcoin futures ETF on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this week, which began trading.
The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) debuted as the second-heaviest traded fund in history. This is bringing in $1.2 billion in trading activity on its second trading day. The fund’s assets have now surpassed $1.1 billion, making it the fastest-ever ETF to reach that milestone.
Analysts at JPMorgan claim that the ETF was not responsible for the recent jump in bitcoin’s price. Instead, money was flowing from gold ETFs and into bitcoin-related items. Investing directly in cryptocurrencies, Singh said, was preferable to obtaining “the synthetic exposure.”
More institutional investors adopting cryptocurrencies will create more dynamics around supply and demand, according to the analyst. Having real assets, he added, will provide the fund “revenue generation potential” in the future. Singh continued, saying:
For quite some time, we’ve been researching this asset class as an addition to our investment holdings; we’ve been following and evaluating it. It grew in importance to the point that it was no longer an option to ignore.
There are almost 6,600 active and retired Houston firemen, as well as their family members, who receive retirement benefits, according to the local newspaper. The town of Houston contributes at least 2 times as much as active firemen, who put in 9 percent of their salaries to the fund.