{"id":72818,"date":"2025-12-02T13:06:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T13:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/72818\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T13:06:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T13:06:14","slug":"only-scratching-the-surface-texas-just-became-the-first-state-to-purchase-bitcoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/72818\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Only scratching the surface:\u2019 Texas just became the first state to purchase bitcoin"},"content":{"rendered":"

The state of Texas recently purchased about $5 million worth of bitcoin<\/a> through a BlackRock-administered exchange-traded fund, a representative for the state comptroller\u2019s office confirmed in an email to The Dallas Morning News on Monday. <\/p>\n

The purchase came several months after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law Senate Bill 21<\/a>, a high-profile and controversial<\/a> legislative effort that enabled the Texas comptroller\u2019s office to establish a publicly funded strategic cryptocurrency reserve. <\/p>\n

It also amounts to one of the first-ever cryptocurrency transactions by a state government amid a broader federal and state government embrace of the recently surging crypto industry. Other states, including New Hampshire and Arizona, have passed similar crypto reserve bills.<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"FILE<\/p>\n

And last year, Wisconsin\u2019s and Michigan\u2019s pension funds also purchased crypto, although with the comptroller\u2019s purchase Texas has now become the first state to actually fund such a reserve. <\/p>\n

Business Briefing<\/p>\n

Become a business insider with the latest news.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe industry is maturing and growing \u2014 it\u2019ll continue to become more mainstream, and I think Texas staking out a leadership position will be very beneficial to Texans over time, similar to what the oil and gas industry has done over the last century,\u201d said Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain Council, a crypto lobbying group that championed the state legislative effort. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re only scratching the surface,\u201d Bratcher said. <\/p>\n

The state made the roughly $5 million purchase through BlackRock\u2019s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT), a fund managed by the major asset management firm that trades in U.S. dollars but generally reflects the price of bitcoin. As of early afternoon Monday, IBIT was trading around $48, reflecting a roughly 20% loss over the past month and a 13% decrease since the beginning of the year. <\/p>\n

Those valuations broadly align with the recently highly volatile price of bitcoin: Early this year \u2014 amid a crypto frenzy inspired largely by the new, extremely crypto-friendly Trump administration \u2014 the world\u2019s predominant cryptocurrency soared to above $100,000<\/a> for the first time in its history, and then in early October reached an all-time high above $126,000. <\/p>\n

Since then, though, as fears have grown about a cooling economy<\/a> and a potential AI bubble that could send the stock market plummeting, valuations of cryptocurrencies have also dipped. One bitcoin traded at around $85,000 on Monday, near the digital coin\u2019s lowest price since April. <\/p>\n

\"FILE<\/p>\n

FILE – In this April 3, 2013 photo, a 25 Bitcoin token is displayed in Sandy, Utah. (AP Photo\/Rick Bowmer, File)<\/p>\n

Rick Bowmer \/ AP<\/p>\n

\u2018Placeholder investment\u2019<\/p>\n

The state of Texas made its purchase late last month at a price around $87,000, according to a social media post by Bratcher, who said he first learned of the state\u2019s purchase through a recent Zoom call that included acting Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock. The comptroller\u2019s office did not respond to a question from The News asking about the specific price the state paid for its IBIT purchase. <\/p>\n

The ETF purchase is \u201ca placeholder investment,\u201d said Kevin Lyons, a representative for the comptroller\u2019s office, until the agency formally contracts with what it\u2019s referring to as a cryptocurrency custodian. The agency is now reviewing responses from a request for information it issued and will later award an official contract, Lyons said. <\/p>\n

While the new state law did not include a specific funding amount, Texas legislators have since allocated $10 million to the reserve. The amount represents a tiny fraction of the state\u2019s $338 billion state budget<\/a>, although the legislation\u2019s supporters have argued it still amounts to an important measure of support for an emerging industry. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think with Texas leading in this way, it\u2019s going to reap benefits for many decades to come across the state,\u201d Bratcher said. \u201cFrom a job creation perspective to a tax revenue perspective and everything in between.\u201d <\/p>\n

Earlier this year, addressing legislators ahead of a vote on SB 21<\/a>, state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake \u2014 one of the driving forces behind the crypto push \u2014 struck a similar note, calling the reserve bill \u201ca forward-thinking measure\u201d that was about \u201crecognizing digital assets not as a trend but as a strategic opportunity\u201d and \u201cstrengthening the state\u2019s fiscal resilience.\u201d <\/p>\n

Yet even if Texas\u2019 public crypto investment remains minuscule, many economists and fiscal watchdogs have criticized SB 21 along with other recent pro-crypto legislation on multiple fronts, arguing it amounts to a lobbyist-driven effort that\u2019s likely to benefit the crypto industry much more than the state\u2019s residents. <\/p>\n

And while Texas has recently embraced bitcoin mining and other facets of the industry, with even Abbott pushing to make the state a global \u201ccrypto leader,\u201d critics have pointed out that cryptocurrency itself has long been plagued by concerns about scams, corruption and energy use. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s also backwards to our values in Texas,\u201d John Griffin, a finance professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said earlier this year. <\/p>\n

\u201cBasically you have a conservative legislature saying, \u2018We want less government,\u2019 and yet here\u2019s a case where you are wanting or encouraging government to speculate and possibly prop up an asset class.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tree<\/a>Texans pay more for insurance than almost every other state, according to report<\/a><\/p>\n

Texas has the sixth-highest insurance burden of any state in the U.S. plus Washington, D.C., according to MoneyGeek.<\/p>\n

\"Gov.<\/a>Digging into Gov. Greg Abbott\u2019s latest property tax proposal<\/a><\/p>\n

He wants to end school property taxes but doesn\u2019t say where the replacement money would come from.<\/p>\n

\"FILE<\/a>Bitcoin poised for worst month since crypto crash of 2022<\/a><\/p>\n

Bitcoin has now shed about a quarter of its value in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The state of Texas recently purchased about $5 million worth of bitcoin through a BlackRock-administered exchange-traded fund, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[910,7319,27,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-72818","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-cryptocurrency","10":"tag-texas","11":"tag-texas-headlines","12":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}