 
 
The State of Michigan Retirement System has tripled its exposure to Bitcoin through the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF, perhaps signaling a positive outlook in the top cryptocurrency’s future value.
Michigan Boosts Bitcoin ETF Bet
By the end of the second quarter, the pension fund owned 300,000 shares worth of ARK 21Share Bitcoin ETF (ARKB), according to a Tuesday 13F form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This marks a notable increase from the 110,000 shares disclosed in April.
ARKB is one of the nearly dozen spot Bitcoin ETFs approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission early last year, offering traditional investors exposure to the price action of the apex crypto without needing to hold the asset itself.
At Bitcoin’s current price of just above $115,000 and ARKB’s current price of $37.72 per share, the value of the State of Michigan Retirement System’s position is now valued at roughly $11.4 million.
Despite the increase, this is equivalent to just 0.03% of the pension fund’s $79 billion in assets under management.
 
“It’s a start,” Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas observed in a post on X, adding that the State Retirement Board of Michigan is the third pension entity to report owning spot BTC ETF shares.
As ZyCrypto reported, the State of Wisconsin Investment Board disclosed $321 million in Bitcoin exposure in February via BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) — a considerable increase compared to the previous year.
These funds, adding spot Bitcoin ETF shares as a pension fund investment, provide crypto enthusiasts with confidence that the asset is becoming more entrenched in the traditional financial world.
Besides the Bitcoin ETF, the Michigan pension fund maintains a separate crypto position through 460,000 shares of the Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE), valued at approximately $13.6 million, making it the first US state pension fund to invest in an Ethereum-based ETF. This position has remained constant since September 2024.
