Texas buys the Bitcoin dip, acquiring $5M of BlackRock’s IBIT

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.