Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. is jumping into the institutional bitcoin game with a $100 million investment in bitcoin and a $5 million equity stake in New York Digital Investments Group (NYDIG).
The twin plays – both revealed in a Thursday press release – give MassMutual direct exposure to the cryptocurrency’s price swings and signal it’s betting that other big fish will follow suit. NYDIG is one of the fastest-growing institutional crypto shops; it provided MassMutual with the $100 million buy.
Without specifically explaining why it saw bitcoin as a reasonable investment, MassMutual told WSJ it was seeking “measured yet meaningful” to an increasingly digital world.
MassMutual’s $100 million BTC bet is barely a drop in its general investment account’s hulking $235 billion money bucket. Coming from a 169-year-old insurance institution in the business of measuring risk, it could to have an outsize influence on bitcoin’s perception among mainstream investors.
That storyline has already been playing out all year.
The life insurance company is the latest institutional stalwart to join bitcoin’s march into the financial mainstream this year. Since the pandemic took hold, publicly traded corporations and storied fund managers have been embracing the cryptocurrency at a pace not seen at any other point in its history.
But with its dual investment in NYDIG, the firm that facilitated this buy, MassMutual is appearing to bet not not only on crypto but on the infrastructure powering institutional adoption.
