Texas has taken its first leg off the starting line in the race to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
According to posts from the Texas Blockchain Council president, Lee Bratcher, the state acquired $5 million in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) on November 20, with another $5 million lined up for a self-custodied Bitcoin purchase.
Texas Buys The Dip
While Texas intends to self-custody its Bitcoin in the future, the ETF structure, albeit not a pure Bitcoin stake, offers a compliant and accessible entry point as it continues to work toward a contract with a custodian.
The $5 million buy follows legislative approval to formalize Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset, positioning Texas at the forefront of state-level crypto adoption, though other states are expected to follow suit soon.
According to Bratcher, $10 million has been allocated from general revenue to build a Bitcoin stockpile, but not all of it has been deployed yet.
The Texas Blockchain Council head congratulated the state in a Tuesday post on X for having “bought the dip” — purchasing its BTC at around $87,000 after the premier crypto slumped from over $120,000.
Still, it’s unclear if the recent purchase is directly related to Texas’s plan for a strategic Bitcoin reserve. In June, Governor Gregg Abbot signed Senate Bill 21 (SB21), officially authorizing the creation of the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve as part of the state’s long-term financial assets, utilizing public funds to create the treasury.
As outlined in the bill, only assets with a market cap exceeding $500 billion are eligible for inclusion in the reserve, a threshold met by Bitcoin but not by BlackRock’s IBIT.
“More Wild Stuff”
That being said, Texas is not the first state to put government money into a crypto ETF. The State of Wisconsin’s investment board held more than 6 million shares in BlackRock’s IBIT as of February this year, before selling off the entire stake in May.
Moreover, Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst Eric Balachunas also noted on X that Texas joins “Harvard and Abu Dhabi” in recently buying IBIT.
“Pretty sure that’s the only ETF to ever be owned by all three. More wild stuff for a not-yet-even-two-years-old fund,” Balchunas posited.
Bitcoin is currently trading at $86,641, down 1% over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.
