Larry Fink, chair and CEO of asset management company BlackRock, explained his “big shift” from associating cryptocurrencies with illicit activities to having the largest spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund.
Speaking at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday, Fink addressed questions related to his views on crypto and Bitcoin (BTC) from journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin.
The BlackRock CEO said his move from associating crypto primarily with money laundering to having exposure to billions of dollars in BTC was “a very glaring public example of a big shift in [his] opinions.”
“My thought process always evolves,” said Fink.
The CEO, who took the stage with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, was not entirely bullish on Bitcoin for the duration of the panel. Fink described Bitcoin as “an asset of fear,” noting that the price of the cryptocurrency had dropped amid news of a US-China trade deal and a potential end to the war in Ukraine.
He added:
“If you bought [Bitcoin] for a trade, it’s a very volatile asset. You’re going to have to be really good at market timing, which most people aren’t.”
Fink’s comments stand in stark contrast to those he made in October 2017, before Bitcoin’s well-known bull run that drove the price of the cryptocurrency to then all-time highs. At the time, the CEO said the cryptocurrency “shows you how much demand for money laundering there is in the world.”
BlackRock's Spot Bitcoin ETF
In the eight years since that message, BlackRock was granted regulatory approval by the US Securities and Exchange Commission to launch one of the first spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in January 2024. The iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, under the ticker symbol IBIT, reached a peak value of about $70 billion.
Net Outflows for IBIT Surged in November
Cointelegraph reported last month that IBIT experienced more than $2.3 billion in net outflows across November, including withdrawals of about $463 million on Nov. 14 and $523 million on Nov. 18. However, BlackRock’s business development director, Cristiano Castro, said at the time that the asset manager was confident in ETFs as “liquid and powerful instruments.”
Among the largest spot Bitcoin ETFs in the market are offerings from Grayscale, Bitwise, Fidelity, ARK 21Shares, Invesco Galaxy, and VanEck.