Efe Nail Saltık 
The US state of Wisconsin purchased 94,562 shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) fund in the first quarter of this year. The value of these shares is approximately $100 million.
This purchase by the state of Wisconsin was included in the quarterly 13F report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday. Wisconsin became the first state to announce bitcoin purchasing. Additionally, the state’s investment board purchased approximately $64 million worth of shares in Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) fund.
Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said in a post on the , because institutions tend to move in packs.”
The investment board, also known as SWIB, was founded in 1951 and currently manages more than $156 billion in assets. It manages the assets of the Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS), State Investment Fund (SIF) and other state trust funds.
The announcement comes on the heels of a March 15 deadline for institutional investment managers managing at least $100 million in assets to declare their quarterly holdings. The market is watching these announcements closely to see if major traditional financial funds invest in bitcoin ETFs that launched earlier in the year.
Bitcoin rose 1% to $61,957 after this news, but fell 1.7% in the last 24 hours with higher-than-expected inflation data announced in the US morning.
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