Pension funds renew Bitcoin investment just as XRP price rises 50% in a week

Following hot on the footsteps of institutional money from Wall Street and the ‘Boomers’ (via the Bitcoin ETFs), the global business press reveals this week that pension funds are now also entering Bitcoin-related products again. This means we have turned the page on the Canadian pension fund scandal, which saw them lose hundreds of millions because of FTX’s demise back in 2022.

XRP’s jump was truly remarkable this week. After the technical setup was confirmed by none other than Wall Street veteran Peter Brandt (and we reported on it), the price rose by as much as 50% in one week.

Dumb money

In terms of capital you have ‘new money’ (Wall Street, Silicon Valley and venture capitalists), ‘dumb money’ (retail investors like you and me who always lose according to Wall Street, hence the term) and ‘old money’ such as wealth managers, Swiss banks and pension funds.

Normally, new money and dumb money enter risky investments first, old money only follows when everything seems risk-free and always shuns everything that is not considered 100% safe.

Canada

In 2022, after the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s major crypto platform FTX, two major pension funds in Canada, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, had to admit hundreds of millions in losses to their members; They later claimed that they had both entered crypto ‘too early’. As a result of this scandal, institutional money for crypto companies dried up at the end of 2022 (and throughout most of 2023).

However, because BlackRock and Vanguard offered Bitcoin ETF funds since the beginning of 2024, those slightly older and cautious investors are interested again. Especially after Bitcoin’s price rose by about 120% in 2024, pension fund advisors’ phones are ringing off the hook. They explained to the Financial Times that more and more American and British funds are once again willing to invest millions in crypto since Donald Trump’s victory in November.

2025 could be a lot of fun.