In 2017, Larry Fink, chairman of asset manager BlackRock, called bitcoin a “money laundering index.”
Bitcoin only shows the level of global demand for money laundering,” the official stressed at a meeting of the Institute of International Finance.
At this point, bitcoin was worth $5,800, as recorded on October 13, 2017 by CNBC.
Larry Fink approached cryptocurrency in this way after Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, said that “if they’re stupid enough to buy bitcoin, they’ll pay the price one of these days.”
Five years later, BlackRock announced this week that it will launch a spot investment fund, for institutional investors in the United States of America (US regulators have been refusing to authorize products for retail investors), indexed to bitcoin. “Despite the deep depression in the digital asset market, we continue to see significant interest from institutional clients looking to access these assets efficiently and cheaply using our technology and product portfolio,” he explained in a statement posted on his blog. .
Also recently, BlackRock announced a partnership with Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, to offer institutional clients access to tokens and cryptocurrencies in its BlackRock portfolio management app, Aladdin, through Coinbase Premium.
BlackRock now argues that bitcoin is the “oldest, largest and most liquid crypto asset and is currently the main focus of interest for our clients in the crypto space.” Excluding stablecoins [indexadas normalmente a um ativo — a maior parte ao dólar]bitcoin corresponds to about 50% of the capitalization of this industry”.
Larry Fink, CEO of the world’s largest asset manager, with assets under management of just under $10bn, had already admitted that the war in Ukraine would cause countries to rebalance their reliance on foreign exchange held in reserve.
With this move, BlackRock puts itself in direct competition with Grayscale, the largest cryptocurrency investment vehicle. As the Financial Times points out, this decision by BlackRock follows other fund managers that have been dabbling in this market, such as Schroders, who took a stake in Forteus, which is very active in the crypto market. Fidelity also announced that it will now allow investors to add cryptocurrencies to their portfolios.
Bitcoin is now worth just over $24,000, after being around $47,000 in March. But recent months have put pressure on cryptocurrencies, following the collapse of Terra/Luna and, more recently, Celsius.
Winter is coming. Cryptocurrencies in a new litmus test
Source: Observadora
