New Jersey’s pension fund has gained indirect exposure to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies by investing in their mining companies.

The pension fund with $30 billion in total assets of its state employees took stakes in two of the biggest names, Riot Blockchain and Marathon Digital Holdings.

According to the state-managed pension fund’s disclosure documents, Common Pension Fund D had $3.66 million in Riot Blockchain and $3.39 million in Marathon at the end of June.

RIOT stocks are currently trading at $28.10, down 64% from mid-February all-time high of $77.90, but still up nearly 12% YTD. As for MARA shares, at $24.64, it is down 56.4% from its early April peak of $56.56 but still up 13.6% YTD.

This is New Jersey’s first allocation in the crypto sector, with other state-pension schemes also getting warmer to crypto in recent months, particularly California through its largest public pension in the U.S.

At the end of last year, California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), with $441 billion in assets, bought more RIOT shares for the first time since 2017 and was holding 113,034 shares in RIOT worth just under $2 million at the time.

“Many institutional investors find publicly traded Bitcoin miners to be attractive investments because they want BTC exposure but prefer to hold securities rather than property due to tax, accounting, & business considerations,” said Michael Saylor, founder & CEO of MicroStrategy, which is heavily invested in Bitcoin.

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