Wisconsin State Investment Board (SWIB) Exits Its Position in Bitcoin (BTC) Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF)

The State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB), one of the first U.S. state pension funds to invest in a spot bitcoin BTC$ exchange-traded fund, exited its position entirely in the first quarter as the price of the largest cryptocurrency fell about 12%.

The State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB) has sold out of its position in a bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund during the first quarter as the price of the largest cryptocurrency fell about 12%.

At the start of the year, the board held more than 6 million shares in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), a position valued at around $350 million. That stake is now gone, its latest 13F filing shows.

The move comes less than a year after Wisconsin became an early institutional adopter of the newly approved crypto investment vehicles and stands in contrast to the board’s activity just months earlier. In the third quarter of last year, SWIB more than doubled its exposure to bitcoin by raising its IBIT holdings from about 2.9 million to over 6 million shares.

The board also added indirect exposure to bitcoin via MicroStrategy (MSTR) shares. In the first quarter it added 26,571 MSTR shares, worth around $10.5 million.

Established in 1951, SWIB manages over $160 billion in assets, serving Wisconsin state employees through the Wisconsin Retirement System and other funds.

In another change to its portfolio, SWIB sold out of its position in Meta (META) during the first quarter. At the end of 2024, the board had a small holding of 10,000 Meta shares.

The state pension fund also exited its position in Qualcomm (QCOM), cutting its nearly 1.4 million share stake in the first quarter.

In contrast to SWIB, Mubadala Investments, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, increased its stake in BlackRock’s IBIT.

The fund, its latest 13F filing shows, added in a little over 490,000 shares valued at around $29 million.

Bitcoin has risen 27% to trade near $103,750 since the end of the quarter.