Pensions in Michigan, Jersey City Add Bitcoin ETFs to Portfolios

The Employees’ Retirement System of Jersey City plans to allocate a small percentage of its portfolio to a Bitcoin ETF, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop said Thursday in a post on the social media platform X.

“The question on whether Crypto/bitcoin is here to stay is largely over,” Fulop wrote. “The Jersey City pension fund is in [the] process of updating paperwork to the SEC to allocate [a percentage] of the fund to Bitcoin ETFs.”

Fulop said on X that the move would be similar to the allocation the State of Wisconsin Investment Board made to a Bitcoin ETF. SWIB, the first U.S. pension fund to announce plans to add a Bitcoin ETF to its portfolio, made a $160 million allocation to two ETFs in May.

Fulop said the process would be completed at the end of the summer, noting that he believes that crypto exposure in pension fund portfolios will become more common. In May, two Bitcoin ETF providers told CIO that some U.S. public pension funds are among those interested in in learning about their ETFs.

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The Jersey City pension fund’s allocation to the digital assets will be revealed in more detail when the fund files its Form 13F, which will be available 45 days after the end of the quarter.

The Jersey City pension fund is not alone. In a Form 13F filing made this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the State of Michigan Retirement System was revealed to have allocated $6.6 million to Ark21 Shares Bitcoin ETF, owning 110,000 shares of the ETF, as of the second quarter.

The State of Michigan Retirement System has approximately $100.9 billion in assets under management; its allocation to the ETF is about 0.0065% of the fund’s total assets.

The Michigan pension system allocates 21.8% of its assets to private equity and venture capital, 21.4% to domestic equities, 13.8% to international equities, 10.4% to real return and opportunistic opportunities, 9.9% to absolute return assets, 9.3% real estate and infrastructure, 8.7% to fixed income and 4.7% to cash equivalents.

The assets are invested across multiple pension funds, including the Michigan Public School Employees’ Retirement System, the State Employees’ Retirement System, the Judges Retirement System, and the State Police Retirement System.

In early January, several Bitcoin ETFs were approved by the SEC. These ETFs have been scooped up by wealth managers, retail investors, asset management firms and hedge funds, but had been relatively untouched by pension funds and other allocators. SWIB, the Michigan Retirement System and ERSJC are, so far, the only three funds known to have such allocations.

Updated with correct SWIB and MRS allocations to the ETFs.