BlackRock Cofounder and CEO Larry Fink has changed his mind on cryptocurrencies over the years.
“I was a proud skeptic,” Fink said Monday on CNBC, “and I studied it, learned about it, and I came away saying, okay, you know, my opinion [for] five years was wrong.”
BlackRock's IBIT has become the largest spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund by market cap, leading Fink to double down on his statement that bitcoin is like digital gold.
BlackRock also recently hit a major milestone for its digital asset class: The BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity (BUIDL) fund surpassed $500 million in market value. This makes BUIDL the highest-valued tokenized treasury fund in the world, according to its issuer, Securitize Markets.
“I'm not trying to say there's not misuses like everything else, but it is a legitimate financial instrument that allows you to have maybe uncorrelated, non-correlated type of returns,” Fink said Monday.
Fink described it as an instrument to invest in during times of increased fear. He remarked that if people believe countries are debasing their currency through excessive deficits, bitcoin offers an opportunity to invest in something beyond the control of any single country, thereby providing greater financial control.
Last week, crypto investment products saw $1.44 billion worth of net inflows, bringing year-to-date figures to a record $17.8 billion, according to CoinShares. At publication time, IBIT has $18.44 billion in assets under management.
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Fink runs a $10.6 trillion asset manager, and one expert said it is hard to overstate how big a deal it is for him to give these “full-throated endorsements” of bitcoin as a legit asset class for everyday portfolios.
“Buy in from BlackRock – as well as other legacy firms like Fidelity – gives boomer advisors comfort and cover to make the allocation. That's why betting against, or minimizing the clear-to-anyone-with-eyes-and-a-brain early success of, these ETFs has been and will be dumb IMO,” Bloomberg Senior ETF Analysts Eric Balchunas wrote in a post on X.
“The other reason Larry is a powerful advocate IMO is that he's all about stocks and bonds. He's pro-humanity,” Balchunas said in a followup post. “I think when someone is 100% invested in btc/crypto it can scare 60/40 ppl, bc it comes off as a ‘doomsday bet against humanity' whereas Larry's saying hey just use a little as a hedge against govt debasement. This is much more palatable message and messenger (at least to the $30T advisor/boomer world).”
This echoed the sentiment Fink shared in his CNBC interview.
“Bitcoin is not an instrument for hope unless you're hopeful you're gonna make a lot of money on it,” Fink said. “But I look at it as a vehicle in which you're expressing your financial acumen, in something that you're more frightened of your existence. And I believe there's a great industrial use for it. And I think a lot of people are missing that.”