British Pension Fund First to Add Bitcoin to Balance Sheet

A UK pension fund has put Bitcoin on its balance sheet—in the first move of its kind in the country.

Pensions advisory firm Cartwright announced Monday that it had told an unnamed client in the UK to make a 3% allocation to the leading cryptocurrency. 

The firm said that it made the recommendation because of Bitcoin’s long-term gains. The cryptocurrency has risen in price by nearly 100,000% since 2013, CoinGecko data shows. 

“Trustees of the unnamed scheme choose to make a 3% Bitcoin allocation, reflecting the scheme’s relatively long investment time horizon,” the announcement said. 

Cartwright’s director of investment consulting at Cartwright, Sam Roberts, said that he hoped the “strategic move” would be followed by others. 

“We are proud to have led this groundbreaking move,” he said, “which we hope will be the start of a trend for institutional investors in the UK to catch up with their increasing number of peers and competitors around the world who are already taking advantage of Bitcoin’s unique attributes.”

Cartwright said it expects institutional adoption of Bitcoin to be similar to when pension schemes started buying equities in the 1970s: It may be slow at first, but then eventually will seem like a bad idea to not allocate the asset to a portfolio.  

Institutional adoption of Bitcoin has grown around the world—but particularly in the U.S.—following the January approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The funds allow investors to buy exposure to the cryptocurrency via stock-like shares that trade on regulated exchanges. 

Major Wall Street players including BlackRock and Fidelity launched the funds, and have so far collectively snapped up over 1 million Bitcoin—or $67 billion worth at today’s prices

Edited by Andrew Hayward