Bitcoin has rocketed higher this year in large part due to BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, putting its $10 trillion weight behind it—triggering Wall Street fomo.
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The bitcoin price has doubled since its August lows, riding a wave of interest that’s been fueled by Donald Trump’s U.S. election victory and U.S. dollar collapse warnings from Tesla billionaire Elon Musk.
Now, as Trump confirms he has big plans for bitcoin, BlackRock has shocked some in the bitcoin community with a bitcoin explainer video that warns there’s “no guarantee” bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap won’t be changed in the future.
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BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink has helped the bitcoin price surge this year.
In the BlackRock video, given a boost when it was shared by MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor, bitcoin was described as having a fixed supply of 21 million—”this hard-coded rule controls supply, purchasing power and helps avoid the potential misuse of printing more and more currency.”
However, a disclaimer appeared alongside the description, adding: “There is no guarantee that bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap will not be changed”—something that undermines bitcoin’s growing reputation as a scarce digital asset comparable to gold.
BlackRock’s admission that bitcoin’s supply cap could be changed has been taken by some as confirmation BlackRock’s adoption of bitcoin will lead to it being “hijacked.”
“They’re getting everyone used to this eventuality,” Joel Valenzuela, a sales and marketing executive at the issuer of the cryptocurrency dash, posted to X. “When the supply cap increase happens, it will have ‘always been part of the plan.’ And today, in 2024, people have the audacity to say bitcoin wasn’t hijacked.”
Bitcoin’s supply is fixed at around 21 million, though the last bitcoin aren’t expected to be created—via a process known as mining—until around the year 2140, over a century from now.
The number of bitcoin that can be issued is part of bitcoin’s code and it would require agreement among those that secure the bitcoin network in return for newly minted bitcoin, known as miners, to change that. If a majority of miners did vote to increase the supply of bitcoin, the network would split, or fork, and the minority would continue to direct their computing power toward the network that is capped at around 21 million bitcoin.
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The bitcoin price has surged to an all-time high over $100,000 per bitcoin this year, boosted by … [+]
BlackRock led a campaign to get a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) approved in the U.S. last year, with the funds making their debut in January.
U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs broke $100 billion in net assets for the first time in November, according to data from Bloomberg Intelligence, while BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) now has almost $60 billion in assets under management, becoming one of the fastest growing ETFs ever.
Earlier this year, arch-bitcoin critic Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive, said he believed bitcoin’s supply could be changed in the future.
“How the hell do you know that it’s going to stop at 21 [million],” Dimon asked on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. “I’ve never met one person who told me that they know for a fact.”
