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The Norwegian flag (Jorge Mantilla/Getty Images)
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Norway’s wealth fund has become an accidentally large holder of bitcoin by proxy

Norway’s investments in companies like MicroStrategy and MARA Holdings means its indirect holding of bitcoin has grown.

While some companies, like MicroStrategy and MARA Holdings, continue their bitcoin stockpiling spree, some countries, like Norway, have another form of exposure to the asset.

The country’s Government Pension Fund Global — the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund — is invested in bitcoin by proxy, with millions allocated to the most significant corporate bitcoin holders. 

And slowly but surely, the country now “indirectly holds 3,821 BTC, reflecting an increase of 1,375 BTC since June 30, 2024, and a yearly growth of 2,314 BTC — a 153% increase compared to its end-of-year 2023 holdings,” according to K33 head of research Vetle Lunde. 

Experts said that Norway’s investment in MicroStrategy and other bitcoin-heavy companies highlights a growing institutional interest in digital assets and underscores the significant regulatory barriers that bitcoin still faces.

“Direct investment in bitcoin by entities like Norway’s fund is hindered by complex regulations, leading to a preference for proxy investments like MicroStrategy,” Alan Orwick, cofounder of Quai Network, said.

Orwick added that this is akin to investing in strategies like bitcoin ETFs and crypto mining stocks, which correlate with bitcoin’s price but provide additional revenue streams, offering a buffer against market swings.

In addition, tax considerations further complicate direct bitcoin ownership.

“In contrast, using proxies allows these institutions to navigate bitcoin exposure under the guise of traditional securities, simplifying tax reporting,” he said. 

This comes at a time when governments around the world are adding to their bitcoin reserve or talking about creating a bitcoin reserve

“We’re witnessing the early stages of a geopolitical race to build bitcoin stockpiles — a modern digital gold rush,” Arman Meguerian, founder and CEO of Timestamp, said. For straightforward market exposure, MicroStrategy, Coinbase, and MARA provide institutions and governments with an easy on-ramp to bitcoin without direct custody.”

Norway’s fund currently has $514 million in MicroStrategy in its portfolio, $46 million in MARA Holdings, $4.4 million in Metaplanet, $616 million in Block, $11.4 million in Riot Blockchain, and a mix of $530 million in Coinbase stock and $2.4 million in its corporate bonds. It also holds $14 billion in Tesla, which is a 1.1% stake in the car company that just made a ton of its Q4 revenue on bitcoin.

That said, it reduced its ownership stake in MicroStrategy during the second half of 2024, so Norway’s fund managers may not be bullish on bitcoin after all.

Update (January 31, 5:00 p.m. ET): adjusted headline and copy to reflect that Norway has reduced its stake in MicroStrategy.


Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy is a financial journalist who’s written for Dow Jones, The Financial Times Group, and Business Insider

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Hyperliquid reclaims all-time high

HYPE, the native token powering perpetuals exchange Hyperliquid and its underlying blockchain, rebounded to reclaim its all-time high previously set at the start of the month.

Treasury firms Hyperliquid Strategies and Hyperion DeFi have also rallied as the token increased double digits in the last 24 hours to trade as high as $76.70, rising past its record price set nearly two weeks ago, according to CoinGecko. In the interim between all-time highs, HYPE pulled back to around $53.

The token has several tailwinds, the first coming from ETF flows. Since their inception in May, HYPE ETFs have yet to record negative weekly outflows, posting a cumulative total net inflow of $171.8 million, per SoSoValue.

The second comes from Hyperliquid spending basically everything it earns in fees to buy HYPE, a mechanism embedded into the protocol’s codebase.

The venue’s buyback funding mechanism is set to add a new source of yield. Validators of the network activated “AQAv2,” which means stablecoin deployers will share about 90% of reserve yield revenue on their supply within the protocol.

Around $6.1 billion of Circle’s USDC resides in Hyperliquid, per DefiLlama. Accrual begins on August 26 and the first payment is made on October 3, the network announced in its Discord channel last week.

A substantial amount of capital is riding on different positions of HYPE. In total, a move down to under $53 would result in the liquidation nearly 1.8 million HYPE worth of leveraged long positions on the on-chain perps venue, or $131.7 million, data from CoinGlass shows. For the upside, a climb above $100 results in the liquidation of more than 3 million worth of leveraged HYPE short positions, or $221.5 million.

HYPE’s rebound to all-time high comes after Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, defended his agency’s decision to approve regulated perpetuals, or futures contracts without expiration dates, CNBC reported on Monday.

Last month, the CFTC approved bitcoin perpetual futures trading in the US through regulated prediction markets firm Kalshi and an affiliate of centralized exchange Coinbase.

“Perps are highly likely to become lightly regulated and thus approved in the US,” said David Pakman, head of venture investments at CoinFund.

“We expect to see perps for many different types of assets, from commodities to equities,” Pakman told Sherwood News.

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Crypto market snaps back as sentiment lifts, with altcoins from ethereum to XRP soaring

The market capitalization of the crypto industry has jumped around $83.2 billion in the last 24 hours, with privacy-focused token Zcash and worldcoin, the native cryptocurrency of the network backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, leading market gains, jumping over 22%.

But the last 24 hours have been good across the board:

Investors have been eager to see some positive signs around the Iranian conflict ending, coupled with hopeful outlooks around the CLARITY act, both breathing some life into assets, Kairos Research cofounder Ian Unsworth told Sherwood News.

Simon Shockey, a crypto strategist at crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy, said the upswing stems from several things converging. He pointed to how alt markets broadly were very oversold following the bug found in Zcash that shook confidence.

Friday, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said Anthropic didn’t find any more serious bugs with the Zcash protocol after Shielded Labs requested the AI firm run a security audit of the network with Mythos.

Shockey added that the pool of willing sellers has dwindled. Even if structurally, AI is a much more compelling and asymmetric bet in the eyes of allocators, many of these crypto assets have simply run out of marginal sellers despite some shorter-term narrative-driven pumps. The only people left to sell at this point are the teams themselves and VCs.

Net-net: oversold conditions plus exhausted seller bases plus a macro backdrop thats stabilized equals a snapback, especially in names that have real usage or community conviction behind them,” Shockey told Sherwood.

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