In spite of his firm’s apparent bias, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink told that his company’s application for a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund will level the playing field for investors.
During an interview on The Claman Countdown, Fink commented, with all of the crypto, they are attempting to democratize it and make it much more affordable for investors. Cryptocurrency bid spreads are quite pricey. Because Bitcoin transactions currently cost a lot of money and a lot of money to exit them, it does significantly reduce returns. We thus expect that our regulators would view these registrations as a method to democratize cryptocurrency, and we’ll have to wait and watch how that develops, he added.
Last month, BlackRock became the most recent company to submit a spot Bitcoin ETF application to the Securities and Exchange Commission. If regulators approve it, the company’s iShares Bitcoin Trust will employ Coinbase Custody as its custodian and would give investors exposure to the most valuable cryptocurrency without actually purchasing it, whereas a spot bitcoin ETF would track bitcoin’s underlying market price.
Fink declined to offer any additional information beyond what was included in the public filing or how authorities might be viewing it.
However, he believes that a product like this for Bitcoin can have the same impact on the mutual fund sector as conventional ETFs did.
ETFs brought about a significant transformation in the mutual fund sector, which is now being completely dominated by them. And we do think that, as he pointed out, if we can increase the tokenization of assets and securities—which is what Bitcoin is—it may revolutionize finance.
With $9 trillion in assets, BlackRock is undoubtedly a major player, but it also joins a long line of companies whose applications were rejected by the SEC, including Grayscale, which is suing the agency over the rejection. Regulators have also rejected Fidelity and the CBOE.
In the meantime, the erratic price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is blamed for helping to push the price of Bitcoin above the $30,000 mark, recovering over 95% from its 52-week low of $15,602.37 hit in November 2022.
The pioneering digital asset marketplace, EDX Markets, was established with support from Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Citadel Securities, Sequoia Capital, and Virtu Financial. On June 20, it was launched.
News of a new exchange supported by Fidelity and [Charles] Schwab as well as requests for spot Bitcoin ETFs made by both BlackRock and Wisdom Tree. As previously reported, Jim Iuorio of TJM Institutional spoke on CME Active Trader. The Bitcoin believers have long claimed that the more established financial firms increase their exposure to digital currencies the more widespread and established they become.
