Canadian Pension Fund Eyed Crypto and Said Never Mind

Canadian pension fund CPP Investments has reportedly stopped any consideration of investments in cryptocurrency.

The firm has made no direct investment in crypto but had formed a team in early 2021 to research opportunities related to the market, Reuters reported Wednesday (Dec. 7).

CPP Investments abandoned that project this year, with one unnamed source telling Reuters it did so in July, and another source saying it dropped the effort earlier than that, according to the report.

When delivering a speech in June, CPP Investments CEO John Graham expressed caution about crypto, the report said.

“You want to really think about what the underlying intrinsic value is of some of these assets and build your portfolio accordingly,” Graham said at the time. “So I’d say crypto is something we continue to look at and try to understand, but we just haven’t really invested in it.”

CPP Investments did not immediately respond to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

As PYMNTS reported Nov. 17, another Canadian pension fund — the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan — was among the investors in the now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX.

In a statement released that day, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan said it had invested $75 million in FTX International and FTX US in October 2021 and another $20 million in FTX US in January. It added that it would write down its investment in FTX to zero at its year end.

“Our strategy aims to diversify investments across asset classes, geography, time horizons and economic outcomes, to mitigate risk and enhance returns,” the group said in the statement. “This supports the Plan’s ability to perform well in a variety of investment environments and mitigates the adverse impact of any one investment loss on the fund overall.”

Before that, another pension fund, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, wrote off its investment of 150 million Canadian dollars in crypto lending firm Celsius after that firm’s bankruptcy, according to the Reuters report.