When South Korea's private pension fund "National Pension Service" (NPS), with an asset management scale of 1,147 trillion won (approximately NT$30 trillion), was questioned recently, it was asked about the "scale and proportion of indirect investment in virtual assets."
According to Korean media reports, the National Pension Service of South Korea invested in the Coinbase exchange and holds a large amount of Bitcoin-related IT company MicroStrategy and other cryptocurrency-related stocks.
However, in response to this matter, the public organization emphasized to National Power Party MP Bai Zongxian that this move was "not for the purpose of investing in virtual assets" and stated that "cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are not investment targets." The company explained that these stocks were included in the portfolio only because they were included in the benchmark index.
The National Pension Service said that in terms of overseas stock investment, it mainly adopts two methods: one is index investment that passively tracks the benchmark index MSCI (Morgan Stanley Capital International Index); the other is to entrust external investment institutions to target individual stocks. Businesses invest. According to the National Pension Service, the Coinbase and MicroStrategy stocks held by the corporation were purchased automatically because they were included in the benchmark index or through outsourcing.
According to data from the National Pension Service, as of March this year, the company held 280,000 Coinbase shares, with a market value of approximately 100.9 billion won (approximately NT$2.3 billion); while the micro-strategy stocks held during the same period The number is 200 shares, and the market value is approximately 400 million won (approximately NT$9 million).
The market generally believes that the National Pension Service’s purchase of Coinbase stocks last year and MicroStrategy stocks this year can in fact be interpreted as indirect investments in virtual assets, especially Bitcoin. However, the National Pension Service denied this and stated:
"Recent media reports have interpreted these investment records as indirect investments, but the National Pension Plan did not purchase shares of these companies for the purpose of investing in virtual currencies."
As for whether it plans to sell the stocks of these two companies or impose investment restrictions on them, the National Pension Service responded: "If you want to restrict investment in specific industries or companies, a decision needs to be made by the Fund Operating Committee. If you want to track products that do not include For the index of virtual currency-related companies, the Fund Operation Committee needs to approve the investment restriction plan of the relevant companies and adjust the benchmark index accordingly.”
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