Some states are investing in cryptocurrency.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Stephanie Hughes.

State governments invest their money a lot like a person might.

Some treasuries, some mutual funds, a dash of corporate bonds, all intended to grow over time.

Now some states are looking to cryptocurrency as an investment.

In 2025, at least 19 states considered laws allowing some state funds to be invested in digital assets.

Three states, Texas,

New Hampshire, and Arizona actually passed laws around this. That's according to a review by the Pew Charitable Trusts. I talked about this interest from states with Liz Farmer. She researches fiscal

policy at Pew and says crypto does have a kind of allure. Bitcoin, even though it is a currency,

is more commonly used and thought of as an investment. And just from a larger investment standpoint,

what we heard a lot from state treasurers in particular who think about this is that, you know,

investment diversification, focus on stocks, on bonds, and then in some of those more kind of

high risk, high reward, alternative assets, being able to invest in a cryptocurrency,

it falls into that last category, and it helps with investment diversification and hedging

against downturns. And so if you are largely invested in stocks and bonds and the economy takes a downturn,

those first investments are going to go down, but your hedge investments might not.

And crypto is one of those investments that can do that.

I understand a few states have created their own strategic crypto reserves.

I think of a strategic reserve as being a stockpile of stuff like

petroleum or seeds or medicine that you can turn to when you really need it. How would this work with

Bitcoin? It's early days, right? We haven't seen a scenario yet where a state has turned to

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