According to CoinDesk, a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing in May disclosed that the Wisconsin State Pension Fund purchased BlackRock’s IBIT and Grayscale’s GBTC in the first quarter. As of March 31, the holdings of the two ETFs The shares are valued at approximately US$164 million. The news shocked the industry, as large institutions, especially pension funds, typically do not invest in ETFs such as the Bitcoin Spot ETF, which has only been launched for a short time.

David Krause, a finance professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee and a member of the state’s investment committee, previously said in an interview with local media in Wisconsin.

"The investment board in Wisconsin has always been very innovative. It's a fully funded retirement fund, so to some extent, they have the ability to invest for the long term. They don't have to worry about liquidity like the retirement funds in Illinois do. The problem is that only 50% of the funds are in place.”

SWIB had about $156 billion in assets under management at the end of 2023, which means its holdings in Bitcoin ETFs only accounted for about 0.1% of its portfolio, according to its website. However, Krause said the investment was just a "test of the waters" and he expected SWIB to increase the amount invested and other superannuation funds to eventually follow suit.​

"I think this is just the first step. I think they're testing the public response to see if there's a backlash to owning these assets, and they're doing it as an experiment because it's not actually going to have a significant impact on the portfolio. , unless the position reaches 1% or 2% of the total shareholding ratio.”

In the first three months of this year, nearly 500 institutional investors disclosed holdings in Bitcoin spot ETFs. As of March 31, the largest owner was hedge fund Millennium Management, which revealed it held $2 billion worth of assets across multiple funds, or about 3% of its total assets under management.

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