19th February 2025 > > Abu Dhabi & Utah.

tl;dr

Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund makes its first BTC purchase. It surely won’t be the last. Utah is leading the race to become the first US state to adopt BTC as a reserve asset.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

This sideways price action is a bit dull. Alts losing yet more ground as both the meme coin sector and AI coins suffer from speculative outflows.

Occasional Series – A Central Banker, until he decided to do something far more useful instead (*)

“The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession”. Ben Bernanke, Chair of the Fed 2006 - 2014, on January 10th, 2008 to “Women in Housing and Finance" luncheon in Washington.

We all know what happened shortly after.

…

(*) He retired.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Abu Dhabi

The sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi, Mubadala Investment Company, purchased $436.9mm of BlackRock’s spot BTC ETF, IBIT. With approximately $1 TRILLION assets under management this represents just 0.04% of total assets, but it is of course its first purchase. All wise investors always DCA into any new investment. I expect that we will end up in the 3%-5% range of total assets being invested in this ETF i.e. $30-50 billion, though the timescale is unclear.

Global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, Geoffrey Kendrick, agrees with me:

“Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund reported a 4.7k BTC equivalent position in Blackrock's IBIT ETF. While this is small for now, we would expect the size to increase over time.”

Geoffrey has even better news for us, as he expects more sovereign wealth funds to follow Abu Dhabi’s lead, and more pension funds:

"The 13F filings for Q4 show that process is underway. It is happening."

He recently made a price prediction of $500,000 by 2028. He is right about the price target, but his timescale is too long, in my opinion.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Utah

The competition between Utah and Texas to be the first US state to legislate for a BTC strategic reserve is hotting up.

Texas has had its first public hearing, but Utah has just taken another important step. Having been approved by the House in an 8-1 vote last month, the bill had its first hearing in the Senate yesterday:

https://le.utah.gov/~2025/bills/static/HB0230.html

It has now been referred to the Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee. Bill sponsor Jordan Teuscher has some good news for the residents of Utah:

“Thrilled to join with @Dennis Porter to announce HB230 which will allow the state to invest in digital assets. While Utah is the 11th state to introduce similar legislation, we will be the first to pass it. Utah continues to lead the nation in blockchain and digital innovation!”