The Texas state government has made a major Bitcoin move, snapping up $5 million worth of shares in BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, with another $5 million lined up for a self-custodied Bitcoin buy.
The government made the purchase on Nov. 20, with the move highlighted via X on Tuesday by Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain Council.
Bratcher said that the Texas government will eventually “self-custody Bitcoin,” but as it’s still finalizing the process, the initial $5 million “allocation was made with BlackRock’s IBIT ETF.”
“$10M is allocated from general revenue but not all $10M has been allocated,” he added.
Commenting on Texas’ purchase, Pierre Rochard, the CEO of The Bitcoin Bond Company, said the move signals a significant shift in attitude toward Bitcoin in just a short amount of time, noting:
“In five years we went from ‘governments will ban bitcoin’to ‘governments are only buying a small amount of bitcoin’. Hyperbitcoinization has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen.”
It is unclear if this move is directly related to the state’s plan for a strategic Bitcoin (BTC) reserve.
In June, Governor Gregg Abbot officially authorized the creation of a state-managed fund to hold BTC as part of the state’s long-term financial assets, utilizing public funds to build the treasury.
As outlined in the initial bill greenlit by Abbot, only assets with a market cap over $500 billion are eligible for inclusion in the reserve, a threshold met by Bitcoin but not by BlackRock’s IBIT.
However, the move still signals a step forward in Texas’s BTC adoption plans.
While its Bitcoin plans are progressing, Texas may not just stop at digital gold.
In mid-October, Texas state Senator Charles Schwertner, one of the lawmakers behind the state’s strategic Bitcoin reserve bill, told Cointelegraph that Ether (ETH) may be next, if its market cap can get and stay above $500 billion.
“If Ethereum maintains its market cap over 24 months, I think it’s reasonable and prudent to give direction that Ethereum could be added to the cryptocurrency [reserve],” he said.
Wisconsin bought $100M of BlackRock’s BTC ETF in 2024
While some have claimed Texas is the first state to snap up BTC through IBIT, the state of Wisconsin’s investment board actually oversaw the purchase of almost $100 million worth of IBIT shares in May last year, filings show.
Related: Coinbase plans to incorporate in Texas, citing ‘legal climate’
Meanwhile, Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balachunas also highlighted via X on Tuesday that Texas joins “Harvard and Abu Dhabi” in recently purchasing IBIT.
“Pretty sure that’s the only ETF to ever be owned by all three. More wild stuff for a not-yet-even-two-years-old fund.”
IBIT is down around 10% year-to-date, despite the growing embrace of Bitcoin by the US government under the Trump Administration this year.
At the time of writing, IBIT is sitting at $49.56, and is up a mere 0.22% in after-hours trading.
Magazine: Big Questions: Did a time-traveling AI invent Bitcoin?
