Jersey City mayor to invest pension fund in Bitcoin ETFs

• Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop plans to invest pension funds in Bitcoin ETFs.
• Fulop likens the investment to Wisconsin Pension Fund’s 2% crypto allocation.
• SEC-approved Bitcoin ETFs see minimal adoption by major financial institutions.

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop has announced plans to invest a portion of the city’s pension fund into Bitcoin ETFs.

Fulop, who has held office since 2013, revealed on July 25 that the city’s pension fund is in the process of updating its paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to include this new investment strategy.

Mayor Fulop believes in the potential of blockchain and crypto

In a statement shared on X, Mayor Fulop expressed his long-standing belief in the potential of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. He did not specify the exact percentage of the fund to be allocated to Bitcoin ETFs but indicated that it would be comparable to the 2% allocation made by the Wisconsin Pension Fund.

Fulop emphasized his confidence in the transformative power of blockchain, describing it as one of the most significant technological innovations since the internet.

Not my normal subject matter in a post but I’ll share anyway – the question on whether Crypto/Bitcoin is here to stay is largely over + crypto/Bitcoin won. The #JerseyCity pension fund is in process of updating paperwork to the SEC to allocate % of the fund to Bitcoin ETFs… https://t.co/5iNEqRqHGM

— Steven Fulop (@StevenFulop) July 25, 2024

Jersey City to join State of Wisconsin in investing in Bitcoin ETFs

Fulop’s move aligns Jersey City with the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, which reported exposure to spot Bitcoin ETFs issued by Grayscale and BlackRock in May. At that time, Wisconsin’s crypto investments amounted to $164 million out of its approximately $156 billion in assets.

The SEC’s approval in January for listing and trading spot Bitcoin ETFs on US exchanges has paved the way for such investments.

However, publicly-run pension funds have been slow to adopt this strategy, with only Wisconsin and Jersey City currently considering crypto ETFs.

Interestingly, Mayor Fulop did not mention any plans to invest in spot Ether ETFs, which began trading in the US on July 23.

Major financial institutions like Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase have made only minimal investments in spot Bitcoin ETFs, amounting to less than $1 million combined — a negligible fraction of their vast asset portfolios.

This initiative by Mayor Fulop marks a significant step for Jersey City, potentially setting a precedent for other municipalities to explore similar investments in the burgeoning field of cryptocurrency.