Italy’s State-Owned Bank Trials Digital Bonds on Polygon Blockchain
The European Central Bank initiated the trial to explore how blockchains can enhance central bank settlement.
According to Michael Sonnenshein, Grayscale CEO, cryptocurrency and Bitcoin investments are coming from and going towards pension funds and endowments.
According to Bloomberg, the size of Bitcoin investments are growing rapidly from various sectors including hedge funds, other institutions, pensions and other endowments. As Sonnenshein explained:
“We’ve started to see participation not just from the hedge fund segment, which we’ve long seen participation from, but now it’s recently from other institutions, pensions and endowments. The sizes of allocations they are making are growing rapidly as well.
Grayscale and Bitcoin ownership
Grayscale has been accumulating Bitcoin aggressively for several months now, having purchased significant portions of cryptocurrencies since the middle of last year. As it stands, the institutional firm now owns approximately 3% of all Bitcoin tokens which are currently in circulation. It seems as though the firm doesn’t look to slow down too as the fund manager continues to add more Bitcoin to its assets under management. As it stands, Grayscale owns $23 billion USD worth of Bitcoin in its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, while $3.6 billion USD sits under its Ethereum trust.
Pension funds in the Bitcoin market
Following retailers and institutional investors, pension funds are entering the market to hedge against national currencies and gain interest over time. If Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies continue in the trend they have been following for the past decade, having stored assets as cryptocurrencies in a pension fund will be an extremely lucrative strategy. This is provided that the market continues to rise over time and doesn’t face a crash that lasts. If the bullish value of Bitcoin at the moment is anything to go by, it would seem that adding the token to an investment sooner, rather than later, can prove profitable over time. Over the past decade, those who bought Bitcoin as early adopters would have made a whopping 26083% return on that investment.