Texas Firefighter Fund Invests $25M In Bitcoin And Ethereum

The Houston Firefighters' Relief and Retirement Fund invested a portion of its $4 billion portfolio in Bitcoin BTC/USD and Ethereum ETH/USD.

What Happened: According to a Thursday Bloomberg report, the fund, which is responsible for the pensions of more than 6,600 active and retired firefighters as well as their surviving family members, invested in cryptocurrency through a partnership with the New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG). NYDIG executed the purchase of $25 million of Bitcoin and Ethereum for the fund and Texas public records show the institution held more than $4.1 billion in total net assets as of June 2020, which translates to a 0.6% crypto allocation.

The fund’s chief investment officer Ajit Singh explained that the institution has been "studying this as an asset class" for some time and admitted that crypto "became an asset class we could not ignore anymore.” He also said that institutional adoption will develop more supply and demand dynamics and pointed out that having actual crypto gives the firm "the possibility of income generation potential.” 

The report follows Bitcoin hitting a new all-time high on Wednesday, the day after the first U.S. Bitcoin exchange-traded fund launched following approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

BTC Price Action: According to CoinMarketCap data, Bitcoin is trading at $62,111.18 Thursday afternoon, after seeing its price drop by about 5.37% over the last 24 hours. 

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay