Australian pension funds consider crypto investment

One of the largest pension funds in Australia has announced that it would make small investments in the cryptocurrency sector, another sign that pension funds take the area of ​​digital assets seriously despite the regulatory risks.

The Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC), which manages a fortune of 92.4 billion AUD ($ 69 billion) and is Australia's fifth largest pension fund, the Financial Times announced that it would be open to investments in cryptocurrencies in the future. A number of family offices and other private investors in the country have already invested in digital assets, but Australia's so -called "supers", which bundle and manage the old -age provision of millions of people, have so far refused to venture the jump.

Early inflows in digital assets, according to Stuart Simmons, the boss of currency of QIC, will probably be “more of a trickle than a flood, since the uncertainty about the extent to which governments and wax dogs will intervene in the rapidly growing but largely unattended crypto.

For conservative pension fund managers, a change to the cryptocurrency markets would mean a great departure from their more conventional asset allocation strategies. With a few exceptions, they have largely kept away from the cryptoma markets. Two US pension funds based in Virginia have dared to jump, while CDPQ-Canada's second largest pension fund-recently cited a round of financing of $ 400 million for the crypto credit platform Celsius Network.

In Europe, large managers hesitiate due to the high reputation and regulatory risks related to digital assets to deal publicly with the area.

"I don't think that super funds and the institutional market that invest in crypto are inevitable, but if the segment matures.

The cryptocurrency markets exploded in a rally last year that has attracted the attention of reverse -hungry investors around the world. At the end of September, the Victor Smorgon Group, the family office of the Australian industrial family, announced that one year after the billionaire's asset manager, she had taken part in the digital asset manager Zerocap based in Melbourne.

In the crypto universe, however, there are various risks that could prevent large funds from getting away. "At the moment there are a number of uncertainties and the operational infrastructure for institutional investments is still immature," said Simmons, adding that the greatest investors want more security on the regulatory front and more protection in "unquantifiable risks" such as fraud, theft and market manipulation.

conservative investors will feel more comfortable with investments as soon as the regulatory requirements become clear, said Simmons and the industry enables a wild-west market to become more professional. He found that the entry of large banks and other financial institutions "emphasizes the perceived opportunity that results from the enabling of crypto investments".

"In the course of the further development of the frameworks, Superfonds could finally react to the demand from users by facilitating investments in cryptocurrencies," he said.

Not all funds are convinced. Andrew Fisher, the head of wealth allocation at Sununuper, another pension fund manager based in Queensland with an managed assets of 85 billion interest or focus ”.