(Bloomberg) — Fairfax County, Virginia, is considering putting pension fund money in two crypto funds that use the investment strategy known as yield farming.
The funds, if approved in the coming days, will be used to provide liquidity on decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges, according to Katherine Molnar, chief investment officer at the Fairfax County Police Officers Retirement System. She made the comments at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday.
Fairfax County was one of the first U.S. counties to put pension money into crypto-linked investments in 2019. Molnar expects the investments being considered to offer a yield of at least 9%. Fairfax’s crypto-focused investments add up to more than 8% of its portfolio, she said.
Fairfax made a more direct bet on cryptocurrencies last year. The Fairfax County Police Officers Retirement System and Fairfax County Employees’ Retirement System invested $50 million into Parataxis Capital Management LLC’s main fund, which buys various digital tokens and cryptocurrency derivatives.
Fairfax is the latest traditional institution to step into the world of decentralized finance, which lets people trade, borrow and lend often anonymously and without intermediaries such as banks. Wall Street trading powerhouse Jane Street said Tuesday it will borrow through a DeFi app.
“We view this as a growth investment,” Molnar said.
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