Pension trustees and sponsors should reassess long-term financial resilience given the growing influence of Bitcoin Treasury Companies (BTCs), Cartwright has said, warning that ignoring the shift could expose pension schemes to risks in covenant strength, portfolio performance, and liquidity.

BTCs are publicly listed companies that raise money through stocks or bonds to build bitcoin reserves, providing retail and institutional investors with indirect bitcoin exposure, especially useful for those unable to invest directly due to tax wrapper or investment mandate restrictions.

Despite still being a niche trend, Cartwright said their growth signals that an increasing number of institutions are viewing bitcoin as a long-term way to protect against inflation and economic uncertainty.

For pension schemes, Cartwright said this represents an “early shift” in how companies and markets think about protecting long-term value.

Cartwright director, Sam Roberts, clarified that the company is not suggesting all pension schemes should “suddenly start buying bitcoin”, but emphasised that trustees and sponsors need to understand the implications of this “tectonic” monetary shift on their specific circumstances.

Indeed, Roberts explained that BTCs reflect a broader move among some corporates to rethink how they store value, hedge risk, and engage with digital monetary infrastructure to grow and strengthen their operating business.

“For pension trustees, this directly impacts covenant strength, portfolio risk, and long-term strategy. Just like exchange-traded funds (ETFs) opened up access to gold, BTCs are creating a new way for investors to tap into bitcoin’s long-term store of value qualities.”

He pointed out that while only around 0.1 per cent of companies are likely to become BTCs, the vast majority should focus on integrating bitcoin into their existing business models in a meaningful, risk-managed way.

In terms of key considerations for pension trusts, Roberts highlighted three priorities: updating risk registers, exploring collateral and liquidity innovations, and monitoring covenant and sponsor health.

For risk register updates, he suggested that trustees should assess scenarios in which companies allocate, or fail to allocate, treasury reserves to bitcoin, and consider how this could affect long-term covenant strength and portfolio risk.

Regarding collateral and liquidity innovation, Roberts noted that bitcoin may evolve into a globally recognised layer of collateral, which it said could improve liquidity and offer new ways to hedge system-specific risks, influencing funding strategy and asset allocation.

On covenant and sponsor health, he said schemes should closely monitor sponsor activity, as BTC adoption grows within certain sectors.

Roberts indicated that companies that fail to adapt to these shifts could face heightened vulnerability to inflation or operational disruption, while those that leverage bitcoin effectively could strengthen their financial infrastructure and long-term resilience.

He also noted that using the bitcoin network for payments can speed up transactions and reduce costs for both domestic and international transfers, potentially transforming corporate financial infrastructure over time.

“We strongly encourage trustees to look at these implications for their own investment strategy and the sponsor’s covenant strength, starting with a thorough risk register review,” Roberts said, emphasising that the question is no longer whether bitcoin deserves consideration, but how and when. 

“Companies don’t need to become BTCs to benefit from bitcoin’s emergence, but ignoring bitcoin’s growing influence could leave portfolios exposed to the blind spots of an outdated and creaking monetary system,” he added.

Roberts argued that trustees and sponsors have a fiduciary duty to “understand it, not ignore it”.

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