Hot: Houston’s firefighters pension fund crypto news

The Houston Firefighter Relief and Retirement Fund (headquartered in Texas, USA, with $5.5 billion in bank assets) stated that it has invested $25 million in Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The Houston Firefighter’s pension fund is carefully investing in cryptocurrencies.

The Houston Firefighter Relief and Retirement Fund, which has $5.5 billion in assets, stated that it invested $25 million in Bitcoin and Ethereum through NYDIG, a Bitcoin-focused subsidiary of asset management company Stone Ridge.

“I think this is another tool for managing risk,” said Ajit Singh, the fund’s chief investment officer. “It has a positive expected return, and it manages my risk. It has very low correlation with all other asset classes.”

According to the National Association of State Retirees Managers, state and local government pension funds are a powerful investment force, managing more than $5.5 trillion in assets. Although, as managers of taxpayer funds, they have made slow progress in the speculative frenzy surrounding cryptocurrencies, Houston’s move is not unprecedented. The two Virginia pension funds that first purchased digital assets two years ago recently stated that they plan to invest another $50 million.

As Bitcoin hit a new high on Wednesday, which has more than doubled since the beginning of the year, some institutional investors are revisiting cryptocurrencies. This week’s rally pushed Bitcoin to above $66,000, due to the optimism that the launch of the first futures exchange-traded fund of this currency in the United States will lead to more mainstream acceptance.

Singh stated that he prefers direct tokens instead of taking risks associated with futures-related investments.

“We don’t want to get synthetic exposure,” he said. “We decided to use tokens directly. As more and more institutions adopt them, supply and demand will develop more and more. Having physical assets-actual tokens-provides us with potential for future revenue generation possibility.”

The Houston Fund handles retirement benefits for more than 6,600 active and retired firefighters and family beneficiaries. Since 2004, active firefighters have donated 9% of their salaries to the fund, and the City of Houston’s donation is at least twice that amount.

Singh believes that crypto investment will pay off.

“For a long time, we have been studying adding it to our portfolio as an asset class; we are observing it, we are analyzing it,” he said. “It has become an asset class that we can no longer ignore.”