Key Takeaways:
- Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global holds about $400 million in ind.rect BTC and ETH
- The fund does not directly buy Bitcoin or Ethereum as its crypto exposure comes from companies in its portfolio that hold digital assets.
- Strategy, MARA Holdings, Coinbase and Tesla are among the companies helping drive Norway’s growing exposure to crypto markets.
Norway’s $1.7 trillion sovereign wealth fund (SWP) has quietly amassed a substantial stake in crypto without directly buying cryptocurrencies. The fact that the companies that it holds an equity stake in have been buying Bitcoin and other digital assets has increased its exposure.
NORWAY HOLDS $400M OF BTC AND ETH
According to their most recent disclosure, the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, Norges Bank Investment Management, holds over $88.25M of Bitmine BMNR, and $357.27M of Strategy MSTR.
Norway has exposure to almost half a billion of crypto. pic.twitter.com/asVqUEirh0
— Arkham (@arkham) August 14, 2026
Crypto Exposure Comes through Public Companies
Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which is responsible for investing in Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, has a broadly passive approach to investing, meaning that they invest in thousands of companies. That way, the fund can get exposure to Bitcoin and Ethereum just by holding shares in companies associated with digital assets.
The estimated exposure has skyrocketed in the last several years. In 2020, NBIM’s indirect exposure was approximately 796 BTC. By the end of 2024, that had grown to approximately 3,821 BTC, which was worth about $356.7 million at the time.
Read More: MARA Pledges $1.2B in Bitcoin for $600M Loans From Coinbase and Two Prime
This rise continued until 2025 and 2026. The initial projections in the report peg NBIM’s indirect Bitcoin exposure at a high of 7,161 BTC by the end of this year and then at 9,573 BTC by mid-2025.
According to estimates, the fund had a stake of approximately 11,549 BTC in the first half of 2026. The total exposure of crypto is reported, however, in the vicinity of $400 million for BTC and ETH, which means the amount of total exposure, and not necessarily the amount of money that Norway has in their wallet.
Strategy Remains a Major Driver
One of NBIM’s largest sources of exposure to Bitcoin is through Strategy. The company has been making accumulation of Bitcoins a core tenet of their corporate plan, making its balance sheet a significant source of BTC exposure for the shareholders.
Other significant investors include MARA Holdings and Coinbase. Both MARA and Coinbase have large Bitcoin holdings, with MARA also being one of the largest publicly traded bitcoin miners, and Coinbase offering exposure via its position as a big U.S. Bitcoin exchange.
Tesla’s indirect exposure to Bitcoin comes from the money it added to the fund’s balance sheet in early 2021.
Norway is Not Directly Buying BTC or ETH
NBIM is not buying and holding Bitcoin or Ethereum. Rather, its exposure is through the ownership of companies that have crypto-related businesses or balance sheets.
The numbers in the report are estimated by K33 Research using publicly available ownership and company data. The calculation is not publicly validated by NBIM.
The crypto exposure is still relatively very low at about $400 million as compared to the fund’s total size. Yet the development demonstrates Bitcoin and Ethereum are more and more infiltrating conventional institutional portfolios whether or not the institutions make immediate crypto purchases, by way of publicly traded firms.
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