Australian Pension Fund Invests $17.2 Million in Bitcoin Futures

AMP Limited, an Australian pension and wealth fund, invested approximately $17.2 million into Bitcoin futures. The firm has no plans to make further investments at this time.

Although Coinbase has deliberately courted Australia’s pension funds, the national industry has shown little interest in Bitcoin investment.

AMP Puts Bitcoin in Pensions

Although Coinbase has made deliberate efforts to court Australian pension fund investment this year, the sector previously showed little interest. However, AMP’s Chief Investment Officer Anna Shelley claimed that “structural changes” like the ETFs have changed the calculation.

“Following testing and careful consideration by our investment team and committee, we included a small and risk-controlled position in digital assets through our Dynamic Asset Allocation program in May,” Shelley claimed.

According to Bloomberg reports, AMP exposed approximately 0.5% of its pension assets to Bitcoin futures. This sector was a deliberate target in the struggle to approve a Bitcoin ETF in Australia. However, the AMP is now acknowledging that crypto can be useful for retirement funds due to its use as an inflation hedge,

Although Shelley claimed that Australia’s ETF approvals were the impetus for this investment, it’s not clear that this was AMP’s main investment vehicle. Granted, Australia has been a booming market for Bitcoin ETFs. Still, that’s no guarantee: although the nation’s pension funds have shown little crypto interest, its largest one invested heavily in AI last year.

In any event, pension investment is growing and has a noticeable impact on the Bitcoin ETF market. Michigan’s largest fund allocated $6.6 million to Bitcoin ETFs, which was followed by a larger Ethereum investment months later. Additionally, South Korea’s National Pension Service put $34 million into MicroStrategy, a more indirect method of Bitcoin exposure.

Bitcoin has been performing well lately, with strong forward momentum. If AMP receives a good return on its investment, it may inspire more interest throughout the sector. For now, however, this pension fund’s Bitcoin futures investment is a rarity, at least in the Australian market.

Meanwhile, the country has been focusing extensively on crypto regulations lately. Earlier this month, AUSTRAC intensified investigations into crypto ATMs, alleging these operations have been increasingly facilitating cybercrime and money laundering.