“Bitcoin is bigger than any government”: how BlackRock became one of the crypto-currency’s biggest backers

 

Blackrock praises Bitcoin since the arrival of ETFs

A few days ago, BlackRock was planning to integrate Bitcoin ETFs into one of its major funds : the Global Allocation Fund. This is therefore an opportunity for the gigantic asset manager to promote cryptocurrency once again.

The trend is not new: Larry Fink has been campaigning for the past 2 months to explain the choice of Bitcoin, both before and after the SEC’s approval of ETFs. Asked in mid-January about the appeal of Bitcoin, BlackRock’s CEO had indeed explained its appeal as an alternative to the “classic” financial system :

“Let’s be clear. If you’re in a country where you fear your government […], or you fear your government devaluing its currency with too big a deficit […], you can say that [Bitcoin] is a very good potential store of value.”

Calling Bitcoin “digital gold”, BlackRock’s CEO speculates that China has banned BTC precisely because it is too difficult to control. According to Larry Fink, Bitcoin is indeed “bigger than any government”.

A gradual evolution for BlackRock

Larry Fink has done a complete about-face on cryptocurrency in recent years. In 2017, Blackrock’s CEO actually had a particularly negative view of Bitcoin :

“Bitcoin simply shows you how much demand there is for money laundering in the world. That’s all it is.”

But things have changed since then. A few years later, BlackRock’s CEO was more open-minded. In 2020, he questioned the value of BTC, and its status as an alternative to the dollar :

“Still unexplored, it’s a fairly small market compared to other markets. Does [digital currency] change the need for the dollar as a reserve currency, if there was a true digital currency that was separate from dollar-based assets?”

It’s this angle that seems to have captured the interest of Larry Fink, who has observed a weakening of the hegemonic dollar in recent years, with a spike in inflation that has shown the limits of the current system.

So there’s a certain irony in Bitcoin’s current explosion, which came after the arrival of ETFs. Initially, Satoshi Nakamoto created his asset as a counterpoint to the “classic” financial system, and displayed a certain contempt for all the Larry Finks of the world. But it seems that traditional finance has caught up with BTC.

Source : Fox Business

Image : World Economic Forum via Flickr (BY-NC-SA)

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