This was a news piece last week that I think was just underappreciated or its significance was underestimated.

https://www.businessinsider.com/insurer-massmutual-scoops-up-100-million-worth-of-bitcoin-2020-12

In 2020 there have been a lot of companies to put Bitcoin on their balance sheet and that was an amazing thing for the space.

But then there was Mass Mutual buying a measly 100 million in Bitcoin.

This is 0.04% of their 235 Billion investment account. This investment amount is a rounding error on its balance sheet and which in the grand scheme of things might look very insignificant.

Here is my reasoning as to why this is not the case:

For an insurer to buy bitcoin, no matter the quantity it needs approval from the FED. This means that bitcoin has in a sense received a stamp of approval from a US regulatory body

The Insurance company’s investment in Bitcoin shows that even the very traditional investor institutions are entering the market.

“We believe that having an equity stake in NYDIG as well as a bitcoin position in our general investment account will help us deliver long-term value to our policyowners,” said Tim Corbett, chief investment officer at MassMutual

Like Paul Tudor Jones helped other Investors and Microstrategy helped other Companies by being first and taking the reputation hit, it could open the doors to other insurance companies and pension funds investing in Bitcoin.

According to the note from the JPMorgan strategists, allocation of just 1% of funds from pension companies and insurance companies in the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan would move $600 billion of institutional funds into cryptocurrencies. At current valuations, that amount represents a 2x market capitalization of cryptocurrencies today.

All of these are long term players who ignore short term volatility, something that pension funds might not do so I expect that they will join in the trend but like MassMutual, they will do it with very small percentages of their portfolio just to dip a toe in the water.

It also helps them figure out how to handle everything in case they want to expand those purchases and makes sure they have all the procedures in place to handle these new kinds of investments.

This and a lot of other macro news keep me bullish for the long term but I hope to be buying a bit more Bitcoin before the mad rush higher.