{"id":13454,"date":"2021-10-21T22:54:06","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T22:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/us-public-pension-fund-for-firefighters-adds-bitcoin-and-ether-worth-25-million-to-portfolio\/"},"modified":"2021-10-21T22:54:06","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T22:54:06","slug":"us-public-pension-fund-for-firefighters-adds-bitcoin-and-ether-worth-25-million-to-portfolio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/us-public-pension-fund-for-firefighters-adds-bitcoin-and-ether-worth-25-million-to-portfolio\/","title":{"rendered":"US Public Pension Fund for Firefighters Adds Bitcoin and Ether Worth $25 Million to Portfolio"},"content":{"rendered":"

The $5.5 billion pension fund for the U.S. city of Houston\u2019s firefighters has announced an investment in bitcoin and ether. \u201cThis investment marks the first announced investment in digital assets by a public pension plan in the U.S.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018A Watershed Moment for Bitcoin and Its Place in Public Pensions\u2019<\/h2>\n

The Houston Firefighters\u2019 Relief and Retirement Fund (HFRRF), the pension fund for the city of Houston\u2019s firefighters, announced Thursday that it had purchased bitcoin and ether for the defined benefit plan\u2019s portfolio. The announcement describes:<\/p>\n

This investment marks the first announced investment in digital assets by a public pension plan in the U.S.<\/p>\n

According to Bloomberg, the Houston Firefighters\u2019 Relief and Retirement Fund has $5.5 billion in assets and it invested $25 million in bitcoin and ether. The investment was facilitated by the New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), a bitcoin investment arm of Stone Ridge Asset Management.<\/p>\n

The HFRRF pension fund handles retirement benefits for more than 6,600 active and retired firefighters and survivors of firefighters. Active firefighters have contributed 9% of their salary to the fund since 2004, with the city of Houston contributing at least twice that amount.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are excited to take this first step forward into the world of digital assets,\u201d commented Ajit Singh, HFRRF\u2019s chief investment officer. He elaborated:<\/p>\n

We have been studying digital assets\u2019 transformative potential for some time \u2026 It became an asset class we could not ignore anymore.<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cThis investment expresses our belief in the disruptive potential of distributed ledger technology for the development and democratization of value accumulation through disintermediation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Singh was also quoted by Bloomberg as saying: \u201cI see this as another tool to manage my risk \u2026 It has a positive expected return and it manages my risk. It has a low correlation to every other asset class.\u201d<\/p>\n

The HFRRF chief investment officer preferred to invest in coins directly, rather than taking on risk associated with futures-related investments. He explained: \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to get the synthetic exposure. We decided to go directly to the token. As more and more institutional adoptions happen, there will be more and more dynamics that develop for supply and demand. And having physical assets \u2014 actual tokens \u2014 gives us in the future the possibility of income generation potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nate Conrad, global head of asset management at NYDIG, opined:<\/p>\n

This investment represents a watershed moment for bitcoin and its place in public pensions. Fiduciaries are increasingly aware of how even a small allocation to digital assets can make a big impact over time.<\/p>\n

Do you think more public pension funds will buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? Let us know in the comments section below.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Bitcoin News
\nMarkets and Prices, Bitcoin investment, firefighters, first public pension, HFRRF, Houston, Houston Firefighters’ Relief and Retirement Fund, nydig, public funds, public pension, public pension plan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The $5.5 billion pension fund for the U.S. city of Houston\u2019s firefighters has announced an investment in bitcoin and ether. \u201cThis investment marks the first announced investment in digital assets by a public pension plan in the U.S.\u201d \u2018A Watershed Moment for Bitcoin and Its Place in Public Pensions\u2019 The Houston Firefighters\u2019 Relief and Retirement…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blockchain-news","category-coin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13454"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyucoin.com\/crypto-labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}