BlackRock (BLK) CEO Larry Fink recently spoke with Fox Business about the potential of crypto, specifically bitcoin (BTC), to revolutionize the financial system. “We do believe that if we can create more tokenization of assets and securities—that’s what bitcoin is—it could revolutionize finance,” he said. This is a shift from his previous stance, when he suggested that crypto was heavily used for “illicit activities.”
Fink went on to explain that bitcoin could be used as an alternative to investing in gold as a hedge against inflation or currency devaluation. “Let’s be clear, bitcoin is an international asset, it’s not based on any one currency and so it can represent an asset that people can play as an alternative,” he said.
The iShares unit of BlackRock recently filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund. While BlackRock has a good track record of getting ETFs approved by the SEC, Fink couldn’t say when a decision for its bitcoin ETF could be expected. “We hope that, like in the past, we could be working with our regulators and get the filing approved one day, and I have no idea what that one day will be, but we’ll see how that all plays out,” he said.
Despite the apparent bullishness of the CEO of the $8.5 trillion asset manager, the price of bitcoin remains little-changed at just under $30,500.