Jersey City Pension Fund Has Joined the Bitcoin Bandwagon

The number of traditional finance entities joining the crypto bandwagon keeps increasing. This time, it is a pension fund for Jersey City, the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey.

According to a tweet by Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, the Employees Retirement System of Jersey City (ERS) has decided to invest in Bitcoin (BTC) through exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Jersey City’s ERS to Invest in Bitcoin

Fulop revealed that the pension fund is in the process of updating its paperwork with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to allocate a percentage of its portfolio to Bitcoin ETFs. The process is expected to be finalized by the end of summer, and the mayor believes such developments will eventually become more common.

“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,” the mayor stated.

Fulop has been the mayor of Jersey City since 2013. He is a candidate for New Jersey’s upcoming gubernatorial elections, seeking to replace incumbent Governor Phil Murphy, who has already served two terms. The mayor believes that the question of whether crypto and Bitcoin are here to stay is “largely” over because they won.

Although he did not divulge the exact amount the pension fund would be investing into Bitcoin ETFs, Fulop said the fund would follow the footsteps of the Wisconsin Pension Fund, which allocated 2% of its portfolio to digital asset investments.

Other Funds Are Joining the Crypto Bandwagon

There are many Bitcoin ETFs in the United States, including the nine new funds that were cleared for launch earlier this year. Fulop did not specify which product the pension’s money would go into. 

The State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB), which the ERS mirrors, earlier this year tapped into two of the most popular bitcoin ETFs, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and Grayscale’s GBTC. The SWIB disclosed $162 million exposure to these funds. The agency boasts over $156 billion in assets under management.

Besides the SWIB and the ERS, other pension funds have been dipping their feet in Bitcoin waters or making substantial efforts to do so. One such is the Government Pension Investment Fund of Japan (GPIF), the world’s largest pension fund with roughly $1.4 trillion in assets, which sought information on Bitcoin investments earlier this year.