Largest Asset Manager In The World Launches Bitcoin Private Trust

BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, announced in a blog post Thursday the launch of a new bitcoin private trust. BlackRock stated, “Bitcoin
BTC
is the oldest, largest, and most liquid cryptoasset, and is currently the primary subject of interest from our clients within the cryptoasset space. Excluding stablecoins, bitcoin maintains close to 50 percent of the industry’s market capitalization.”

BlackRock highlighted its commitment to offering its clientele a variety of choices in its investment portfolio. “BlackRock
BLK
is committed to providing clients with access to their choice of investment opportunities and has launched a spot bitcoin private trust. The trust is available to U.S. institutional clients and seeks to track the performance of bitcoin, less expenses and liabilities of the trust.”

With bitcoin valued lower against the U.S. dollar over the past five months, BlackRock stated some of their institutional investors still were expressing interest in the digital asset. “Despite the steep downturn in the digital asset market, we are still seeing substantial interest from some institutional clients in how to efficiently and cost-effectively access these assets using our technology and product capabilities,” stated the blog post.

The firm did also note how organizations such as RMI and Energy Web are developing programs to bring greater transparency to sustainable energy usage in bitcoin mining, and will follow progress around those initiatives. BlackRock also noted that four areas of digital assets had the potential to help their clients and capital markets more broadly, including permissioned blockchains, stablecoins, cryptoassets, and tokenization.

With the recent announcement earlier this past week around the partnership with Coinbase, BlackRock expressed how the common clients would be able to track their bitcoin exposures alongside their public and private investments. Overall, the largest asset manager in the world describing bitcoin as the oldest, largest, and most liquid digital asset, certainly is a signal as to how large the space is growing and trending into part of the more traditional investment portfolios in Wall Street.

Disclosure: I hold some bitcoin. This article is not financial advice.