A bill to let North Carolina invest in cryptocurrency using billions of dollars in public funds from the State Pension Plan and other sources cleared a state House committee Wednesday — only one day after that same committee had shot down the proposal.

Republican lawmakers who had expressed skepticism about the bill Tuesday reversed their stance on Wednesday and voted to approve it, after facing pressure from their leader, House Speaker Destin Hall.

Top legislative leaders almost never attend committee meetings, but Hall came Wednesday to remind the House Commerce Committee that the bill is a priority of his. He also sought to assuage their concerns about the wisdom of investing state employees’ pensions in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

“It’s new for North Carolina, but it’s not new across the world,” Hall said in a public presentation that followed a series of private conversations with GOP holdouts. “Some of the largest investment firms in the entire world, that have hundreds of billions of dollars, are utilizing these crypto ETFs that this bill will now allow our Treasurer to use, if he sees fit.”

An ETF, or exchange-traded fund, is a tool used to diversify holdings by investing in multiple types of an asset. In this bill, for example, the state wouldn’t be allowed to invest directly in Bitcoin or any other individual cryptocurrency. Instead the state would be allowed to invest in an ETF containing multiple types of cryptocurrencies.

The goal is to reduce risk, while still seeking to find a way of getting pensioners better returns than the state’s current mix of investments. But one lawmaker who personally invests his own money in cryptocurrency — Rep. Bryan Cohn, D-Granville — said he fears the markets are still too volatile to bet public dollars on.

“Crypto ETFs quickly lose value, and we’ve seen major exchanges collapse,” Cohn said. “They just disappear.”

The State Employees Association of North Carolina opposes the bill, voicing similar concerns.

“Bitcoin has been a roller coaster at best, and state employees and retirees do not like the conversation about investing in this highly volatile currency,” SEANC lobbyist Flint Benson said at the Tuesday hearing.

On Tuesday, the bill was shot down following a host of criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Many members said they either don’t understand what cryptocurrency is, don’t think it’s a safe bet, or both.

But by Wednesday, Cohn had become the committee’s lone public critic of the bill, and it passed without much additional discussion.

If the bill becomes law many of the details on how to invest in crypto would be up to State Treasurer Brad Briner, a Republican who has been on the job two months.

Some lawmakers on Tuesday had expressed concern about Briner’s lack of experience on the job, and they asked for the treasurer to come testify in person and clear up their concerns.

Briner didn’t come Wednesday, sending a letter instead. He wrote that he was in favor of the bill and thought crypto could help the pension plan and other state funds earn more money. “We will embrace innovation, technology and data every step of the way to deliver the best results we can for the people of North Carolina,” Briner wrote.

Hall stuck up for Briner’s credentials Wednesday, saying he has plenty of relevant private sector experience even if he is new to state government.

“We’ve got a Treasurer who is a Wall Street-trained investor, who knows what he’s doing,” Hall said. “… He basically ran the investments for [former New York City Mayor] Michael Bloomberg, who y’all may know of. He’s a billionaire.”

Cohn told Hall he didn’t doubt Briner’s credentials and intelligence. But that won’t matter, Cohn said, if Bitcoin collapses like the housing market did in the mid-2000s, harming many experienced investors who had viewed mortgage-backed securities as a safe bet.

“There were a lot of smart people at Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers,” Cohn said, until those investment firms went bankrupt in 2008.