The Onatario Teachers’ Pension Plan has decided to steer clear of cryptocurrencies.
The decision comes after the OTPP, which manages over $190 billion in assets, lost its entire $95 million investment in cryptocurrency exchange FTX after it went bankrupt in November 2022.
OTPP was one of the many investors in the now-defunct crypto exchange, having invested twice: once during the bull market in 2021 and again during the exchange’s Series C funding round in early 2022.
In an interview with the Financial Times, OTPP chief executive Jo Taylor stated that the pension fund should not rush into another cryptocurrency investment. Taylor stated that they are still processing what happened with the exchange and that they would be much more cautious about investing in emerging assets such as digital currencies in the future. The pension fund is in charge of providing pensions to over 330,000 teachers and school employees.
“We took our time and performed extensive due diligence on the business.” It didn’t turn out the way we expected. We weren’t always given all of the information we needed to make an informed decision.”
The pension fund is now aiming to direct its investments toward more traditional markets, such as real estate, and to gain exposure to the private credit sector. The investment plan provider intends to invest 10 billion Canadian dollars ($7.4 billion) in the aforementioned domains over the next three years.
Aside from OTPP, another prominent pension fund, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), lost its entire $154.7 million investment in the troubled cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network. Celsius was one of many crypto lenders that failed during the cryptocurrency crash in the second quarter of 2022.
The dramatic collapse of FTX, the third-largest crypto exchange at the time, had a significant impact on the entire ecosystem. Investors’ and venture capitalists’ trust in the crypto ecosystem has plummeted, and crypto funding has dried up. It also shifted the narrative of the crypto ecosystem’s mass adoption and drew regulatory scrutiny from around the world.
