Wisconsin Pension Buys $160 Million in Bitcoin ETFs

The State of Wisconsin Investment Board is among the first U.S. public pension funds to allocate to a spot bitcoin ETF, recent SEC filings show.

According to SWIBs Form 13F for Q1 2024, the $156 billion pension fund purchased $64 million worth of Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust ETF, and $99.2 million worth of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, 1,013,000 shares and 2,450,400 shares respectively.

Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust closed at $63.17 at the end of the first quarter. iShares Bitcoin Trust closed the quarter at $40.47.

A SWIB spokesperson confirmed that the fund held positions in the two ETFs as of March 31, 2024. SWIB’s form 13F was released on Tuesday.

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Not the last?

Speaking at an event earlier this month in London, Manuel Nordeste, head of business development for Fidelity Investments’ digital assets, noted that defined benefit plans and other pension funds “are only starting to talk to their investment committees” about crypto assets.

“Now we’re starting to have conversations with the larger, real money institutional investor types, and we’re getting some of those clients, as well as corporates and so on,” Nordeste said.

Speaking with CoinDesk, Robert Mitchnick, head of digital assets at BlackRock, said that institutional investors, including sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and endowments are currently discussing how to approach crypto ETFs.