Texas has taken a significant step in Bitcoin adoption by investing $5 million into BlackRock’s Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) and plans to set aside an additional $5 million for self-custodied Bitcoin purchases. This transaction, completed on November 20, was shared by Lee Bratcher, the Texas Blockchain Council president, on social media.

Bratcher noted that while the state government intends to “self-custody Bitcoin,” the initial allocation is associated with BlackRock’s IBIT ETF, although not the entire $10 million has been put to use yet.

“In just five years, perceptions of Bitcoin have shifted dramatically from a belief that authorities would outlaw it to governments cautiously entering the market,” said Pierre Rochard.

It remains to be seen whether this investment is connected to Texas’s strategy of creating a Bitcoin reserve. In June, Governor Gregg Abbot authorized a fund for maintaining BTC that is financed by public assets, aimed at strengthening the state’s treasury.

Only currencies exceeding a market capitalization of $500 billion are accepted into this reserve, a threshold met by Bitcoin but not by BlackRock’s IBIT.

This decision is a progressive move in Texas’s Bitcoin integration objectives. Also, there are hints that Texas could extend its crypto ambitions to Ethereum, contingent on its standing market cap.

In a related note, Wisconsin’s investment board notably purchased nearly $100 million in IBIT shares last year, as detailed in regulatory filings.

Eric Balachunas, a senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, remarked that Texas joins prestigious entities like Harvard and Abu Dhabi as recent IBIT purchasers.