BlackRock CEO Larry Fink Calls Bitcoin an International Asset That Could Revolutionize Finance

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BlackRocks Larry Fink has suggested that investors invest cash in bitcoin instead of gold to hedge against inflation.

Photo by Sean Pollock on Unsplash

Posted July 5, 2023 6:53 PM EST.

Last week, BlackRocks’ request for a spot Bitcoin ETF sparked a flurry of new filings from other investment managers hoping to gain approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). . Some industry watchers called the event one that brought the crypto space back to life, with existing digital asset funds seeing hundreds of millions of dollars in inflows since the filing.

In an interview with Fox Business on Wednesday, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said he believes crypto’s role is to digitize gold in several ways. He suggested that Bitcoin could be an alternative to gold in order to hedge against inflation or the devaluation of a local currency.

Let’s be clear, Bitcoin is an international asset, Fink said.

It is not based on a single currency, and so it can represent an asset that people can play as an alternative.

Statements by BlackRock chiefs today stand in stark contrast to those made in 2017, when it described Bitcoin as an index of money laundering. At the time, Bitcoin was trading at just $5,800, but gained 470% on the year.

Bitcoin is currently trading at $30,450, with Finks’ comments having little effect on its price. However, the fact that the leading digital asset is now apparently less susceptible to wild price swings could well be the reason why the big institutional players are taking it more seriously.

Although the SEC has yet to approve a spot Bitcoin ETF, market participants are particularly optimistic about BlackRock’s chances, given that the investment manager has had nearly all ETF applications approved.

We hope that, as in the past, we can work with our regulators and get the case approved one day, and I have no idea what that will ever be, but let’s see how it all plays out, Fink said.

We believe that if we can create more tokenization of assets and securities, which is what bitcoin is, it could revolutionize finance.

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