The latest state effort to set up the investment of public money into cryptocurrency, a bill introduced on Monday in North Carolina, is backed by the state’s Speaker of the House Destin Hall.
The high-profile North Carolina push contemplates putting as much as 10% of its general and highway funds into digital assets, limiting it to crypto with such a high market capitalization that only bitcoin (BTC) currently qualifies. It joins 18 other states with bills that weigh various ways of putting public money into crypto, many of them focusing on investing portions of their state’s retirement funds.
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“Investing in digital assets like Bitcoin not only has the potential to generate positive yields for our state investment fund but also positions North Carolina as a leader in technological adoption & innovation,” Hall said in a statement.
Two other states — Wisconsin and Michigan — already have crypto in their retirement portfolios for public employees. And at least two more states are in serious discussion to join the others, making a total of 23 that are devoting close scrutiny to the idea of staking portions of their financial futures on the digital assets sector.
The bulk of this trend took off when President Donald Trump openly embraced a similar idea at the federal level. He issued an executive order in his opening days in office that encouraged his administration to explore the idea of stockpiling crypto assets. There’s also legislation in Congress to make that happen, but it hasn’t yet moved forward.
Among the states at this point, Utah’s is the leading effort, having cleared its state house and moved to the senate there.
Read More: As One State Gets Closer on a Crypto Reserve, Others Jump Into the Fray