Key Takeaways
Why is BlackRock staying out of the altcoin ETF rush?
The company views much of the market as less valuable in the long term.
How much cryptocurrency does BlackRock own?
At the time of writing, the asset manager had $100 billion in BTC and ETH.
BlackRock has been conspicuously absent during the latest wave of altcoin ETF rush, especially for Ripple [XRP] And Solana [SOL].
Some had speculated that the world’s largest asset manager might jump on the trend at the last minute, but the company seems comfortable with Bitcoin alone. [BTC] and ether [ETH] ETFs.
In a recent interview, BlackRock Head of Digital Assets Robert Mitchnick said that “most altcoins are worthless.” He added,
“You have to be very careful when you go way under the table with hundreds of thousands of crypto assets today. The vast majority of them are or will be completely worthless.”
He added that Bitcoin continues to dominate the market due to a clear product market fit, investor story and a large addressable market like digital gold. Mitchnick also supported long-term ownership of BTC instead of risky short-term leveraged trading.
BlackRock’s crypto stance explained
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, for his part noted that Mitchnick’s attitude explained BlackRock’s reluctance to explore more coins.
The company debuted its iShares Bitcoin Trust Fund (IBIT) in early January 2024, followed by an ETH-based ETF product in the second half of last year.
Due to the market correction, BlackRock is currently active holds approximately $84 billion worth of BTC and leads the ETF players, who now collectively control 6.8% of the total BTC supply.
Source: Dune
Additionally, the company owns $15 billion worth of ETH, which amounts to more than $100 billion value of the total crypto holdings.
Before launching large-scale operations in crypto ETFs, BlackRock was already active in the sector behind the scenes. It was the primary manager of Circle’s USDC reserves.
Tokenization will be the next frontier
Now the company plans to tokenize all traditional financial products – stocks, bonds, ETFs, and so on.
Its flagship tokenized money market fund, BUIDL, has done just that grown to almost $3 billion in market capitalization. In the past year alone, BUIDL attracted over $2.3 billion in inflows, dominating the tokenized treasuries segment.
Source: RWA
And the growth is not limited to money market funds and stablecoins; On-chain stocks have also gained momentum. It remains to be seen how the expected SEC rules will impact the tokenized market.