Texas Buys $5M Of BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF, Earmarks $5M For Direct BTC Buys

Texas bought $5 million of BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF (exchange-traded fund) and earmarked another $5 million for a direct BTC purchase.

Texas Blockchain Council president Lee Bratcher said in an X post that the state government executed the Bitcoin purchase on Nov. 20, when Bitcoin was trading near $87,000.

The move follows Governor Greg Abbott’s approval of a state-managed Bitcoin reserve earlier this year..

”Texas will eventual self-custody bitcoin, but while that RFP process takes place, this initial allocation was made with @BlackRock‘s IBIT ETF,” Bratcher said on X.

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said Texas joins Harvard and Abu Dhabi in buying BlackRock’s IBIT, adding that he’s “pretty sure that’s the only ETF to ever be owned by all three.”

“More wild stuff for a not-yet-even-two-years-old fund,” he added.

Bitcoin’s price continues to hover near the $87k level and traded at $87,243.14 as of 1:04 a.m. EST after falling 1% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. 

Texas’s buy came after IBIT had plummeted over 24% in the last month. Balchunas said in a Nov. 24 post on X that short interest around IBIT had “plummeted,” while adding that it “wasn’t exactly high to begin with at 2% of shares.” 

Texas Not The First To Purchase Shares In IBIT

While Bratcher claimed in his X post that Texas has become the first state to buy IBIT shares, the state of Wisconsin actually purchased IBIT shares in May last year. According to filings, Wisconsin’s investment board bought almost $100 million worth of the spot Bitcoin ETF’s shares then.

Wisconsin then more than doubled its exposure to the fund, before selling its entire stake in the ETF earlier this year, the latest filings show. 

US Spot Bitcoin ETFs Record Inflows In Latest Trading Session

The Texas BTC purchase came amid a multi-day outflow streak for the spot Bitcoin ETF market in the US. 

Data from Farside Investors shows that between Nov. 12 and Nov. 24, the funds had only seen two days of net daily inflows. During this period, IBIT had only seen one day of net daily inflows. 

US spot BTC ETF flows (Source: Farside Investors)

On Nov. 18, IBIT had also suffered its worst single-day outflows since its market debut in early 2024, when investors pulled $523 million from the investment product. 

In the latest trading session, IBIT was able to snap its outflows streak with $83 million net daily inflows on the day. The trading session’s largest inflows of $170.8 million were posted by Fidelity’s FBTC, which was enough to cancel out the outflows seen by Bitwise’s BITB, Ark Invest’s ARKB, and VanEck’s HODL. 

Overall, the funds saw collective net daily inflows of $128.7 million.