Original article by: Cheyenne Ligon
原文标题：Jersey City to Invest in Bitcoin ETFs, the Latest Pension to Dive Into Crypto
Original source: Coindesk
Compiled by: Koala, Mars Finance
Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop tweeted: “The question of whether crypto/bitcoin will survive is essentially over + crypto/bitcoin won.”
According to a post on social media Thursday by Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, the Jersey City Municipal Pension Plan will soon invest in Bitcoin through an exchange-traded fund. While the amount is unlikely to be a huge sum, the decision is another symbolic victory for cryptocurrency on the road to wider adoption. Earlier this year, a pension agency in Wisconsin made a similar decision.
Fulop, who has been mayor of Jersey City since 2013, announced the upcoming investment on X, formerly Twitter, writing: “Not my usual post topic, but I’ll share it anyway — the question of whether crypto/bitcoin will continue to exist is essentially over. Crypto/bitcoin won.”
Fulop, a Democrat, has announced his candidacy for New Jersey gubernatorial election in 2025. Current Gov. Phil Murphy, also a Democrat, has served two terms and is ineligible for reelection.
Fulop added that Jersey City’s pension fund, the Jersey City Employees’ Retirement System, is currently updating its filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to allocate a percentage of the fund to a Bitcoin BTC ETF. According to Fulop’s tweet, the investment is expected to be completed by “late summer.”
While Fulop did not specify how much of the pension fund’s assets under management would be allocated to the Bitcoin ETF, he said it would be “similar” to the 2% allocation that the Wisconsin Pension Fund made to a Bitcoin ETF earlier this year.
Fulop did not specify which bitcoin ETF Jersey City is considering investing in. Fulop said: "I have always believed in cryptocurrencies (through their ups and downs), but in a broad sense, beyond cryptocurrencies, I do believe that blockchain is one of the most important new technological innovations since the Internet."
Public pension funds are slowly but steadily growing their interest in Bitcoin. Wisconsin’s public pension plan, the Wisconsin Investment Board, which manages about $156 billion in assets, is by far the largest pension plan to have dabbled in the cryptocurrency space, investing $160 million in a spot Bitcoin ETF earlier this year.
Some small pension funds, such as the Houston Firefighters Relief and Retirement Fund, which manages about $5 billion in assets, have been investing in cryptocurrencies for several years.
Fairfax County, Virginia’s pension fund has also invested in cryptocurrencies through VanEck’s New Financial Income Fund, which became a creditor of cryptocurrency company Genesis when it filed for bankruptcy last year. Outside the U.S., public pension plans including Japan’s $1.4 trillion Government Pension Investment Fund, the world’s largest pension plan, requested information about bitcoin investments earlier this year. “I believe it will eventually become more common,” Fulop said in a tweet about pension fund allocations to cryptocurrencies.
