Another state pension fund has revealed it holds significant holdings of shares of a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).
The Michigan State Pension System said it owned 110,000 shares of the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF as of June 30, according to a 13F filing Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The board’s ARK 21 shares were valued at $6,597,800.
Eric Balchunas, Bloomberg’s chief ETF analyst, confirmed the system’s buy into ARKB, noting that the ETF’s ownership is small on a percentage basis. “It’s a start,” he said, adding that the Michigan State Pension Board is the third pension agency to report owning physical bitcoin ETF shares.
The Michigan Pension Fund has added physical Bitcoin ETF shares to its pension fund investments, following Wisconsin Investment Board and Jersey City. In May, the Wisconsin agency reported that it owned 2,450,400 shares of BlackRock’s IBIT (valued at about $100 million) and 1,013,000 shares of Grayscale’s GBTC (valued at about $64 million) at the end of March.
Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop also mentioned that the city will invest a portion of its pension fund in a spot Bitcoin ETF. Fulop predicts that the process for the city to invest in a spot Bitcoin ETF will be completed by the end of the summer.
Like the other 10 spot Bitcoin ETFs approved on January 10, ARKB provides investors with exposure to Bitcoin price movements without having to own the asset itself. According to The Block’s Data Dashboard, ARKB holds 6.22% of the total market share of spot Bitcoin ETFs. The fund manages $3.09 billion in assets.
The Block has reached out to the Michigan Department of the Treasury for comment.
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About the Author
MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020, joining just before Bitcoin first broke $20,000. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering all aspects of crypto news but with a penchant for NFTs, metaverse, web3 games, fundraising, crime, hacking, and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from the Science, Health, and Environment Reporting Program (SHERP) at New York University and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.