Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., a 170-year-old insurance company has bought $100 million worth of bitcoin as the hype around the top cryptocurrency has seen many other mainstream financial giants going big in bitcoin in 2020. The bitcoin purchase made by MassMutual however stands out from the rest, primarily because as an insurance firm their priority is to manage risk, thus it is a kind of approval that bitcoin is a truly global asset for mitigating risks.
The invested amount of $100 million is very small when we compare MassMutuals total investment of nearly $235 billion as of Sept. 30. However, the significance of an insurance company buying an asset just over a decade old which many believed would never succeed in the mainstream is bigger exposure than the amount of investment.
The news about MassMutual Bitcoin investment created a frenzy of the sort on Twitter, as many called it one of the biggest approval that bitcoin has arrived in the mainstream. Alexander Leishman, the founder of River Financial wrote,
This is massive news for Bitcoin. An insurance company buying Bitcoin from its general account is one of the biggest stamps of approval possible.
2/ The funds in an insurance company’s general account are usually invested very conservatively, as these funds are used to pay policy holder claims.
— Alexander Leishman 🇺🇸 (@Leishman) December 10, 2020
More than 10 Publicly Traded Companies Now Hold Bitcoin
The list of traditional financial giants and publicly traded companies holding bitcoin on their company sheets has grown to more than 10. PayPal started it all this year when it announced that it will avail crypto trading and holding services from within its payment app. Many believe PayPal’s decision to allow for cryptocurrency purchase gave a massive boost to crypto adoption with its 286 million userbases.
List of publicly traded companies that now hold #Bitcoin:
MicroStrategy inc.
Galaxy Digital Holdings
Square inc.
Hut 8 Mining Corp
Voyager Digital LTD
Riot Blockchain, Inc.
Bit Digital, Inc.
Coin Citadel Inc
DigitalX
BIGG Digital Assets Inc.
MassMutual— Bloqport (@Bloqport) December 10, 2020
PayPal’s decision was followed by a number of traditional giants and hedge fund managers openly showing their support for bitcoin as a hedging asset, be it BlackRock or Standard Chartered, the financial giants who once called bitcoin a Ponzi scheme, now believe the scarce digital asset is superior to gold.
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