Michigan state pension fund makes $6.6 million bitcoin ETF investment

by Suzanne McGee

(Reuters) – The Michigan State Retirement System, which oversees about $143.9 million in retirement fund assets for state employees, said in a regulatory filing on Friday that it invested $6.6 million in the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF.

This is the second confirmed investment by a pension fund in Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) launched in January, a sign that the assets are slowly starting to attract traditional institutional investors amid growing interest in crypto assets.

Wisconsin’s state investment board, which manages $156 billion in assets for the Wisconsin Retirement System, disclosed its holdings in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust and its stake in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust in May.

Those assets were worth $99 million and $63 million, respectively, as of the end of March. The pension fund has yet to file a second-quarter portfolio update.

Quarterly disclosures, known as 13-F filings, are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission approximately 45 days after the end of each quarter and may not reflect current positions.

While the lion’s share of the $32 billion invested in nine newly launched Bitcoin ETFs in the past six months has been by retail investors, according to VettaFi, analysts are watching for any increase in demand from institutions such as the Michigan pension fund.

“The institutions allocating resources to these funds are likely to have a longer time horizon,” said Todd Sohn, an ETF analyst at Strategas. Other analysts say the greater number of long-term investors should reduce bitcoin’s often extreme volatility.

The mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey, said on social media platform X that they plan to allocate money to bitcoin ETFs, without specifying a time frame.

The Michigan State Retirement System did not respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Suzanne McGee; Editing by Michelle Price and Marguerita Choy)