New Jersey Mayor Plans Bitcoin ETF Investment for City Pension

• Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop plans to invest part of the city’s pension fund in Bitcoin ETFs, updating documents with the SEC for this purpose
• Fulop’s proposal follows Wisconsin’s example, which allocated 2% of its pension fund to Bitcoin ETFs, amounting to $164 million
• While major financial institutions have minimal investments in Bitcoin ETFs, Fulop’s move signifies growing interest in crypto among public pension funds

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who’s been a crypto supporter for a while now, has suggested putting some of the city’s pension funds into cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

On July 25, Fulop posted on X (formerly Twitter) that Jersey City’s pension fund is working with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to update its documents to include investments in Bitcoin ETFs.

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

The mayor hasn’t said exactly how much of the fund will go into crypto, but he did mention that it’ll be similar to the 2% that Wisconsin’s pension fund has allocated.

“I’ve been a long time believer (through ups/downs) in crypto but Broadly, beyond crypto i do believe blockchain is amongst the most important new technology innovations since the internet. ” Fulop said.

Back in May, the State of Wisconsin Investment Board let us know that it had invested $164 million in Bitcoin spot ETFs from Grayscale and BlackRock. That’s out of a $156 billion portfolio.

The SEC approved Bitcoin spot ETFs for trading in the U.S. in January, but so far, only public pension funds from Wisconsin and Jersey City are considering these crypto ETFs. Fulop hasn’t said anything about investing in Ethereum spot ETFs, which started trading in the U.S. on July 23.

Big financial players like Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase have put together less than $1 million in Bitcoin spot ETFs—just a tiny fraction of their multi-trillion-dollar portfolios.