Norges Bank Investment Management holds $400M in crypto assets through indirect exposure

Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, holds hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin exposure. Not because anyone in Oslo decided to buy crypto, but because the companies in its massive equity portfolio keep stacking sats on their own balance sheets. Norges Bank Investment Management, the entity that runs the $1.7 trillion fund, has seen its indirect Bitcoin holdings balloon over the past several years. According to estimates from K33 Research, the fund’s exposure stood at roughly 3,821 BTC, valued at approximately $356.7 million, at the end of 2024. That represented a 153% year-over-year increase. How a passive index fund accidentally became a Bitcoin whale NBIM doesn’t buy Bitcoin directly. It buys equities. Lots of them, across thousands of companies worldwide, in a broadly passive investment strategy designed to capture global market returns. The crypto exposure is a side effect. When companies like Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), MARA Holdings, Coinbase, and Tesla load up their balance sheets with Bitcoin, any fund holding their stock inherits that exposure by default. Since 2020, when NBIM’s indirect Bitcoin investment ...