BlackRock (Assets Under Management $7.4 Trillion) CEO: Bitcoin Has Caught Our Attention

Larry Fink believes Bitcoin may evolve into a global market. BlackRock (Assets Under Management $7.4 Trillion) CEO: Bitcoin Has Caught Our Attention

“Bitcoin has caught the attention and the imagination of many people. Still untested, pretty small relative to other markets.”

He Then Added:

“Can it evolve into a global market? Possibly.”

Fink isn’t the only BlackRock executive touting Bitcoin’s potential value. Last month, the company’s chief investment officer, Rick Rieder, told CNBC that not only is Bitcoin “here to stay” but that it will “take the place of gold to a large extent.”

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Previously, comments like these would have been considered highly irregular coming from institutional brass, not to mention the world’s largest asset manager with assets under management north of $7.4 trillion as of 2019.

But the public’s perception of Bitcoin has changed dramatically over the past year. Record inflows into Grayscale products, the growth of Bitcoin corporate treasuries, and Guggenheim’s Securities and Exchange Commission amendment to gain exposure to BTC represent a seismic shift in institutional adoption.

Beyond these moves, investment legends Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller are also backing Bitcoin.

Institutional demand for Bitcoin has created an alarming shortage in the market, with the likes of PayPal and Cash App scooping up most, if not all, newly mined BTC. PayPal alone is buying up almost 70% of the new supply, according to Pantera Capital.

Currently, only 900 BTC is mined each day. With demand increasing following the deflationary May halving, prices are likely to continue higher. Even Citibank has predicted a comparatively astronomical Bitcoin price by the end of 2021.

Although BlackRock doesn’t outright own Bitcoin, it has indirect exposure to the asset through MicroStrategy, a business intelligence firm that converted its balance sheet to BTC. BlackRock is the largest MicroStrategy investor with a 15.2% stake in the company.

Updated: 7-22-2019

CEO of World’s Largest Asset Manager Makes The Case For Crypto

The CEO of asset management giant BlackRock says there’s a huge need for emerging technologies like cryptocurrency.

In a new interview with CNBC, Larry Fink says the concept of Libra and cryptocurrency fills a gap that’s sorely needed for people who move money across borders.

“I was in Europe this past week. I had to buy a new briefcase because mine broke. And when I was going to sign the receipt, it asked me if I wanted to pay in euro or dollar. And I chose dollar. Then I looked at it – I’m still being charged 3%.

When you think about all the people who may work in one country and send money back home, they generally do that through organizations that charge 5% to 10%. There is a need, whether it’s a Libra or something else, to democratize the exchange of foreign currencies. Today with computers and the electronic market, it should be ten basis points, five basis points…

I don’t believe we need an international currency, but there is a huge need to bring down the fees.”

Back in April, Forbes reported BlackRock hired former Ripple product marketer Robbie Mitchnick and announced a “massive management overhaul” to focus on alternative investments.

The company is exploring the potential of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, but has not confirmed whether it plans to offer crypto assets to its customers.

Updated: 12-28-2020

BlackRock Seeks VP Blockchain Lead To ‘Drive Demand’ For Firm’s Crypto Offerings

The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, is seeking to hire a vice president to help build and execute strategies and “drive demand” for the company’s crypto and crypto-related offerings.

* BlackRock, which has $6.84 trillion assets under management, has posted a job vacancy for a New York-based VP of blockchain to help with the valuation of crypto assets.

* According to the post, the applicant must have at least a year’s experience in the technological foundations of blockchain technology including cryptographic hash functions, distributed network consensus mechanisms, and public-private key cryptography.

* Candidates should be able to “devise and articulate fundamental valuation methodologies for crypto-assets; evaluate game theory and decentralizing governance models associated with blockchain technology,” said the listing.

* BlackRock CEO Larry Fink recently made some bullish comments on bitcoin, stating it has “caught the attention” of many people and that the nascent cryptocurrency asset class can possibly “evolve” into a global market asset.

Updated: 1-20-2021

BlackRock Files To Add Bitcoin Futures To Two Of Its Funds

BlackRock Inc. is adding cash-settled Bitcoin futures as an eligible investment to two funds, according to regulatory filings.

The world’s largest asset manager filed updated prospectuses for two funds on Wednesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that included cash-settled Bitcoin futures among the assets they can buy.

The funds where the exposure could be added are BlackRock Strategic Income Opportunities and BlackRock Global Allocation Fund Inc.

A BlackRock spokesperson declined to comment beyond the filing.

Updated: 1-27-2021

Blackrock CEO Calls Bitcoin An Untested Asset In A ‘Very Small Market’

Larry Fink said he was fascinated with the media hype surrounding Bitcoin but expressed concerns about the crypto asset’s volatility and market size.

Just one week after asset manager Blackrock appeared to be preparing to invest in Bitcoin futures, CEO Larry Fink has some mixed messages on crypto.

In an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday, Fink referred to Bitcoin (BTC) as a volatile asset within “a very small market.” The CEO’s remarks continued, with fascination over the media coverage of Bitcoin, given that the “asset category is so small compared to other asset categories.”

“[Bitcoin] could be another store of wealth, but right now it’s still untested,” said Fink. “It has huge volatility, moving in 5-6% increments with small dollar investments moving it.”

He Added:

“It has not been proven yet on the long-term viability of it. Some form of a digitized currency is going to play a bigger role in the future, and it may be Bitcoin. It may be something else that has developed.”

Other executives at the investment manager have made seemingly more bullish remarks. In November 2020, Blackrock chief investment officer Rick Rieder said “Bitcoin is here to stay” and the crypto asset would likely “take the place of gold to a large extent.”

BlackRock has indirect exposure to Bitcoin through its ownership stake in business intelligence firm MicroStrategy. The company made an initial $425 million investment in the crypto asset in summer 2020 and has since added thousands more BTC to its holdings.

However, Blackrock may be exploring the possibility of getting more directly involved in the crypto space. Last Wednesday, a pair of prospectus filings for two of Blackrock’s funds appeared on the website for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Both mentioned potentially using Bitcoin derivatives and other assets as part of its investment scheme, but neither was definitive about the investment firm’s entry into the Bitcoin futures market.

At the time of publication, the price of Bitcoin is $30,734, having fallen 4% in the last 24 hours.

BlackRock’s Entry Reflects A Change In Institutional Outlook On Crypto

The entry of the world’s largest asset manager into the realm of crypto finance could potentially signal the entry of other big-name players.

On Jan. 20, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with over $8.7 trillion assets under management, appeared to have given the green light to two of its associated funds, BlackRock Global Allocation Fund Inc. and BlackRock Funds, to invest in Bitcoin futures.

In this regard, the prospectus documents filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission suggest that BlackRock is looking to dabble in Bitcoin (BTC), especially as the first ever cryptocurrency has been added to the company’s lists of derivative products cleared for use.

Furthermore, over the last few months, the company’s executive brass had spoken positively about Bitcoin, alluding to the fact that in the near future, a number of institutions may look toward digital assets to expand their list of financial offerings.

For example, in an interview last November, Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of BlackRock, said that Bitcoin has the potential to “take the place of gold to a large extent.” A somewhat similar sentiment was echoed by the company’s CEO, Larry Fink, who told the media that Bitcoin has caught the attention of the masses and has the potential to possibly evolve into a global market of its own.

Lastly, it’s also worth remembering that exactly one month ago, BlackRock posted a job advert seeking a qualified individual for the role of vice president, blockchain lead for its New York office. According to the post, the role required applicants to be able to devise and set in motion various strategies that can help “drive demand for the firm’s investments and technology offerings.”

What Does Blackrock’s Entry Mean For The Market?

BlackRock investing in Bitcoin futures is a significant step forward for the global crypto ecosystem, as it brings tremendous credibility to Bitcoin as a new asset class. Jason Lau, chief operating officer of cryptocurrency exchange OKCoin, told Cointelegraph that this move will set the stage for other asset managers to follow since most traditional asset managers are typically “consensus followers,” adding:

“With BlackRock’s announcement, other asset managers are going to be able to point to BlackRock’s work in convincing their investment committees and the client investment boards about the potential and maturity of BTC and the crypto ecosystem.”

Currently, CME futures and investments trust shares issued by Grayscale and Bitwise are two of the primary vehicles for institutions to get involved with crypto. However, due to this severe limitation, there have been large premiums from trusts versus the underlying price of BTC. For example, Lau stated that during the recent BTC price appreciation in December, Grayscale had a 40% premium on Bitcoin’s underlying value.

Kyle Samani, a managing partner at Multicoin Capital — a thesis-driven investment firm — told Cointelegraph that BlackRock’s entry is a big step forward for the entire industry. He believes that by enabling some of its funds to go long on BTC, it will allow more investors to join the space.

Is Blackrock Late To The Party?

While some are rejoicing at the news of BlackRock making its way into the crypto market, Maksim Balashevich, founder and CEO of Santiment — a market intelligence platform for cryptocurrencies — told Cointelegraph that from a purely “behavior analyses” standpoint, it’s not just the big headlines that should be considered.

Instead, the reaction of the masses, which, more often than not, is the single most crucial factor that determines market price action, could be more decisive. He added: “BlackRock’s entry is no special event but just yet another ‘latecomer’ from ‘big money’ funds. The move won’t have any implications except further professionalizing, increasing the liquidity of the market.”

When asked about the impact BlackRock’s entry may have on Bitcoin’s potential value stabilization, Balashevich pointed out that despite these “big moves,” crypto volatility is here to stay and that many more ups and downs will happen in the coming months. “Players like BlackRock are sharks playing against each other,” he said.

Lastly, on the subject of whether the point of saturation in terms of institutional entry into this space is getting closer, he believes that the industry is indeed “getting very close to the top” and that “there aren’t too many big players left to enter the market.”

Could An SEC-Approved Bitcoin ETF Be On The Horizon?

Historically, the SEC has rejected a number of ETF proposals — such as those submitted by Phoenix Wilshire, Gemini, etc. — sighting price manipulation, lack of liquidity and price indexing sources as key concerns. However, with BlackRock making inroads into this space, it seems as though the stage may finally be set for an ETF being approved sometime in 2021, as Lau pointed out:

“An increasing number of large reputable financial firms a la BlackRock, Guggenheim, SkyBridge, etc. are entering the crypto space and lending their sign of approval. This may give the regulatory body more confidence in the maturation of the crypto market and the need for an ETF to give further access to crypto.”

He pointed out that it will be extremely interesting to see if BlackRock’s ETF business, iShares, decides to become the first major mover to recognize this fast-opening window of opportunity and file for an ETF itself. Recently, investment management firm VanEck has once again submitted an application with the SEC to create a new Bitcoin ETF. This move was followed by another similar application submitted by Valkyrie Investments. So the ETF race is back on following a brief period of calm.

Also, with Bitcoin recently scaling past the $42,000 threshold, it appears as though a number of Wall Street institutions are quickly warming up to the crypto industry, as is highlighted by the fact that MassMutual recently became the latest big-name player from the realm of traditional finance to acquire $100+ million worth of BTC.

Not only that, a number of high-profile investors such as Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller have cozied up to this relatively new asset class in recent times and from the corporate domain, companies such as Square and PayPal have purchased Bitcoin.

Updated: 2-17-2021

BlackRock Has Started To ‘Dabble’ In Crypto, Says CIO

“Holding some portion of what you hold in cash in things like crypto seems to make some sense to me,” said Rick Rieder.

Rick Rieder, chief investment officer at BlackRock Financial Management, hinted that the firm ha already invested a percentage of its portfolio into crypto.

In an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday, Rieder said BlackRock — with more than $8.6 trillion in assets under management — has “started to dabble a bit” into crypto investments.

The chief investment officer described the volatility of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) as “extraordinary” but acknowledged that many investors were looking for “places that appreciate under the assumption that inflation moves higher as debts are building.”

“Holding some portion of what you hold in cash in things like crypto seems to make some sense to me, but I wouldn’t espouse a certain allocation or target holding,” said Reider. “My sense is the technology has evolved and the regulations have evolved to the point where a number of people find it should be part of the portfolio.”

Rieder did not specify what percentage of BlackRock’s assets under management may be in crypto, but his comments come following the multitrillion-dollar asset manager mentioning Bitcoin in two prospectus filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The filings suggest the possibility of BlackRock using Bitcoin derivatives and other assets as part of its investment scheme.

Executives at the asset management firm have spoken positively about crypto in recent months. Rieder previously said that Bitcoin has the potential to “take the place of gold to a large extent,” while in December 2020, CEO Larry Fink said Bitcoin caught his attention and could possibly evolve into a global market.

The chief investment officer’s recent remarks follow Tesla making a $1.5-billion Bitcoin purchase earlier this month, prompting many firms to face questions about if they’ll consider investing in the crypto asset.

Microsoft and General Motors have both said they have no immediate plans to put Bitcoin on their balance sheets, while Amsterdam-based payment processor Adyen did not rule out the possibility.

Updated: 5-16-2021

Bitcoin Is Durable, Says BlackRock’s Rick Rieder

The chief investment officer seemed to be unmoved by Elon Musk’s announcement on Wednesday but still highlighted some challenges Bitcoin will likely face.

Rick Rieder, chief investment officer at BlackRock Financial Management, is pushing back against Telsa CEO Elon Musk’s decision to drop Bitcoin as a form of payment.

In an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box on Thursday, Rieder said Bitcoin (BTC) had “not reached maturity yet” and still had some hurdles to overcome, like the public perception of its energy consumption and price volatility. Though he didn’t specifically mention Musk’s claims that the crypto asset comes “at a great cost to the environment,” he said BTC wasn’t “a normal, stable asset” just yet.

“I think it’s durable,” said Rieder, referring to Bitcoin. “I think it will be part of the investment arena for years to come, but some of these challenges and the volatility around it — regulatory dynamics, fiat currency concerns relative to crypto […] — are real. They will be overcome over time.”

“Bitcoin is an interesting asset. It is one that has not reached maturity yet,” BlackRock’s @RickRieder #btc #bitcoin. “I think it’s durable. I think it will be part of the investment arena for years to come … but these challenges are real. They will be overcome over time.” pic.twitter.com/EentcYawQN

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) May 13, 2021

Rieder said in February that Blackrock had “started to dabble a bit” in crypto, acknowledging that investors may sometimes want to hold digital assets instead of fiat. His comments came following the multitrillion-dollar asset manager mentioning Bitcoin in two prospectus filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The filings suggest the possibility of BlackRock using Bitcoin derivatives and other assets as part of its investment scheme.

Following Musk’s remarks on the environmental impact of Bitcoin, the price of the crypto asset fell to under $50,000 for the first time in weeks. At the time of publication, BTC’s price is $50,590, having dropped 11% in the last 24 hours.

The head of fixed income at the world’s largest asset manager says he is distributing his wagers broadly in the face of unprecedented times. He doesn’t expect the pandemic recovery and fiscal stimulus to spur a wave of inflation that ends the long bull market in bonds, but he is also hedging those wagers after learning early in his career that being right isn’t the same thing as making money.

Recently, that has meant trimming assets sensitive to inflation and interest-rate swings, building up cash in his portfolios and buying more corporate loans for their higher returns. To the clients calling to ask whether the economy is overheating, he says price increases are likely temporary, but that the Federal Reserve will have to gradually reduce support for the economy—a prospect he doesn’t find daunting.

“We don’t think inflation is going to be that high for a persistent period of time,” says Mr. Rieder, 59 years old. “But if the markets believe in inflation, well that’s more important than whether six months from now people say, ‘Gosh, you were right.’”

His stance is a key marker on Wall Street, and it stands out at a time when broad inflation worries have racked markets. BlackRock handles $9 trillion in assets on behalf of investors around the globe. Mr. Rieder oversees roughly 20% of that. That alone would give his decisions reach far beyond the company. He is also known as a wizard at divining market forces from the swings of currencies or sovereign bonds.

Many on the Street disagree with his sanguinity. Investors including Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio and billionaire trader Stanley Druckenmiller are among those worried that the government’s post-pandemic largess risks fueling inflation, hurting the dollar and inflating asset bubbles. A measure of inflation surged in April as the U.S. recovery gained steam, with consumer prices jumping to the highest 12-month level since 2008.

Mr. Rieder’s position is supported by benchmark bond yields, which continue to suggest a rapid return to slow, steady growth. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which tends to rise when investors expect a surge in growth and inflation, settled at its highest level in more than a month after data Wednesday showed a bigger-than-expected climb in consumer prices. It remains below its yearly high of 1.749% hit at the end of March.

Wall Street colleagues and competitors describe Mr. Rieder as the opposite of a swashbuckling trader: affable, modest, measured—a 10-handicap golfer whose favorite course is Augusta National. In an era of slow growth, heavy borrowing and perpetually low interest rates, his focus on the crosscurrents of markets and economics commands attention from many.

“There isn’t an investor out there who doesn’t want to know what he’s thinking,” says Marc Badrichani, global head of sales and research at JPMorgan Chase & Co. “With an expansive view of global markets, he has a unique ability to spot emerging trends and incorporate them into long-term investment strategies.”

Raised in Westchester County in New York and educated at Emory University and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Mr. Rieder says he enjoyed picking penny stocks when he was younger, such as shares of AMF Bowling Worldwide Inc., and thought he might become a financial analyst.

After business school, he joined E.F. Hutton & Co. in 1987 without knowing much about bonds. Brokers shouted and flashed hand signals. The trading floor was jammed with bulky computers, but he says he relied on blotters, pen and paper.

“I’ll never forget the first month, sitting there and thinking maybe this is the wrong job,” Mr. Rieder says. “I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. It was all lingo. I’d go home, and then a week later I’d realized I heard that word again.”

An early trade provided a lifelong lesson. Mr. Rieder bought a chunk of Canadian bonds issued by a utility company, Hydro-Québec. He still remembers the coupon and maturity—details on a bond that affect its value.

He would stay after work to write down the price of every asset that could move his investment. Certain in his analysis, he bought even more. But word of his position got out to traders at other banks. The price moved against him, and he eventually sold at a significant loss. Ever since, he has avoided putting too many eggs in one basket, a strategy he calls “make a little bit of money a lot of times.”

“It changed my thinking and really influenced how I thought about fixed income,” Mr. Rieder says. “I learned that you may be right, but if enough people believe you’re wrong the markets can really hurt you.”

It is a strategy that served him well during his climb at BlackRock. He joined the firm in 2009 to run alternative investments for fixed income and became known for his deep dives into data and a habit of cramming multiple, tiny charts into presentation slides. His performance—three of the funds he manages have been awarded gold medals by rating company Morningstar—eventually earned him a promotion to chief investment officer of fixed income in 2010.

In April 2019 he took over BlackRock’s Global Allocation Fund, which includes investments in stocks. Institutional-class shares have since posted a cumulative return of 35% through March 31, outperforming benchmarks and other comparable funds. More than 85% of BlackRock’s actively managed taxable fixed-income assets beat peers or benchmarks over the one- and five-year periods ended March 31.

Morningstar analyst Claire Butz says the ratings company upgraded the Global Allocation Fund in May because of Mr. Rieder’s leadership and ability to combine big-picture views with extensive research. She says his takeover was “a welcome change from the previous manager’s more siloed approach.”

BlackRock has also ascended. Quarterly profit rose 49% in April. The firm posted record inflows, with $61 billion pouring in to fixed-income investments in the first quarter of 2021. Across all strategies, BlackRock took in $171.6 billion in net new money, up from roughly $35 billion in the year-earlier quarter.

That size makes BlackRock a prized client for bond desks across Wall Street, with dedicated top-ranked salespeople squabbling over the revenue generated from its trades. It also poses a challenge for Mr. Rieder’s strategy—making it hard to invest in smaller markets without moving prices.

The inflows also indicate that investors remain willing to buy bonds and other fixed-income investments, despite the worries about inflation or a sudden reversal from the Fed.

Mr. Rieder expects growth to surge and the dollar to remain stronger than many analysts and investors currently predict. Inflation could be “shocked higher over the next few months,” Mr. Rieder says, but he expects it to remain contained in the long term by trends that include an aging population.

“We are living in a very different time than the 1970s and 1980s because of the demographics,” he says. “As the baby-boomer population ages, individuals have to buy fixed income for pensions, retirement investments—and soak up this huge amount of debt that’s coming, meaning it’s not as scary today.”

Still, he has adjusted his holdings for potential inflation risks. He has pared positions in junk bonds, citing their extremely low yields. He is also holding a lot of cash in portfolios, increasing his investments in loans and buying long-dated corporate bonds with derivatives that offer protection from interest-rate swings. He is holding some euros, too.

The possible end of easy monetary policy doesn’t worry Mr. Rieder, who has lived through previous Fed tapering that didn’t deal a lasting blow to stocks and other assets.

“Letting rates normalize, knowing what that plan is—markets can deal with that, they just don’t like uncertainty,” he says. “It’s really hard setting your portfolio up when you’re not certain how that plan will evolve.”

Updated: 7-15-2021

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink Seeing ‘Very Little’ Demand For Crypto Lately

Fink said he has been asked about crypto and bitcoin in the past, but not in the last two weeks.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said in a CNBC interview on Wednesday that he is not seeing much demand for digital assets.

* Talking on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” before a call to discuss BlackRock’s second-quarter earnings, Fink said he has been asked about crypto and bitcoin (BTC, -1.47%) in the past, but not in the last two weeks.

* “We see very little demand for those [crypto] types of things,” Fink said.

* He had previously said that bitcoin has “caught the attention” of many people and that the cryptocurrency market was still relatively small compared with others.

* “If we could improve financial literacy. If we could help more people focus on not just speculating of markets and the ups and downs but translating that into investing in the long run,” Fink said in December, commenting on meme stocks.

* BlackRock said Wednesday it has about $10 trillion of assets under management.

BlackRock Closes In On The Once Unthinkable, $10 Trillion In Assets

Chief Executive Larry Fink says inflation is here to stay.

BlackRock Inc.’s second-quarter profit rose 14% on new money coming into the giant asset manager, a sign that investors are becoming more confident about an economic recovery.

The company posted a quarterly profit of $1.378 billion or $8.92 a share, up from $1.214 billion or $7.85 a share a year earlier. Its revenue grew 32% to $4.82 billion.

Its assets under management rose 30% to $9.5 trillion, from $7.3 trillion a year earlier, cementing its dominance as the world’s largest money manager. Known for its funds that track markets and trade rapidly on exchanges, BlackRock’s returns reflect the market’s tremendous rally since the depth of the pandemic and Chief Executive Larry Fink’s push to build a company that serves nearly all types of investors.

While the firm’s returns were lifted by a slate of assets rising to record highs, its fortunes remain tied to markets and shifts in investor sentiment. Mr. Fink will now have to navigate an environment where the pandemic and the central banks’ intervention in markets are changing the economy in radical ways. Prices for things from used cars to oil have risen as the U.S. economy opens up.

And, as the largest shareholder of many of the country’s largest companies for investors, Mr. Fink thinks inflation is likely here to stay.

“I don’t think it’s temporary,” he said.

He said government policies that focused on protecting domestic jobs and America’s supply chain will have inflationary effects. He added that most of the businesses he is talking to are behind on their hiring plans for 2021. This is going to lead to wages rising.

“We’re making structural changes that are going to change the framework of inflation,” he added.

He projects that inflation will exceed 2% annually over the next five years or so.

BlackRock said it was raising base salaries by 8% for active employees up to and including director levels.

Shareholders weren’t thrilled by the prospect of higher wages eating into future profits. BlackRock stock fell by more than 3% in morning trading.

Although BlackRock adjusted profits beat analysts’ estimates, the amount of new money it took in was less than what Wall Street had projected.

BlackRock added roughly $81 billion of new investor money, down from the $100.2 billion haul in a year earlier. Part of the fall came from one big pension fund withdrawing indexed assets in the first half of the year.

Money moving through the company’s sprawling lineup of exchange-traded funds, index products and other funds is a barometer of Wall Street sentiment and where major investors are making bets.

Amid the surge in stocks, bond funds have lost some of their luster this year. Investors added $41.29 billion in money to BlackRock’s bond funds in the second quarter, down from $60 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Some investors are demanding higher yields to be compensated for the risks of inflation.

“Inflation is more damaging to fixed income because the cash flows don’t mean as much as it used to for investors,” said Kyle Sanders, an analyst with Edward Jones.

Some $23 billion of new flows in the quarter went into money funds and cash management products.

With interest rates so low, BlackRock has had to cough up money to prevent yields of money-market funds from dipping below zero in recent months. In the second quarter it gave up some $160 million to prevent yields from turning negative. That is about twice what it gave up in the first quarter.

The firm continues to drive the cost of many funds ever lower, squeezing competitors across the industry. This strategy has cemented the dominance of its exchange-traded funds that trade like stocks on exchanges. That business took in $75 billion in new flows in the quarter.

BlackRock’s business of funds run by bondpickers and other portfolio managers that make active bets continues to gain new investor flows. Despite being a smaller chunk of the firm’s assets, this business generated $1.8 billion in base fees and securities lending revenue in the quarter, on par with the $1.8 billion from index-tracking strategies and ETFs.

Mr. Fink said that active flows helped buoy growth. “Our quarter really yells at that,” he said. “That is indicative of the importance of the active side of BlackRock.”

BlackRock sells software, including a suite of tools called Aladdin, to banks and other institutions to measure risk. Technology-services revenue—which includes fees from Aladdin—rose by about 14%.

BlackRock has also been trying to become a bigger purveyor of funds that can profit from governments’ new focus on climate risks. It generated $35 billion in net flows from sustainable-branded funds in the quarter.

As the firm grows bigger, it faces more scrutiny on how it is wielding shareholder votes on behalf of millions of investors. Mr. Fink said Wednesday that BlackRock is studying ways to let more people whose money the firm is investing for exercise their own voting power.

Updated: 1-6-2022

Larry Fink Wants To Save The World (And Make Money Doing It)

CEO of giant asset manager BlackRock uses his position to push firms to address climate change.

Few private citizens wield more power in America today than Larry Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock Inc.  in pushing companies to embrace climate-friendly policies, that has made him a lightning rod.

The firm he runs manages some $10 trillion for pension funds, endowments, governments, companies and individuals, equal to more than 10% of the world’s gross domestic product in 2020. Its funds are among the three largest shareholders in more than 80% of the companies in the S&P 500.

As steward for millions of investors, BlackRock wields vast shareholder voting power, which it uses either to back managements or to prod them in new directions.

Today, Mr. Fink is telling CEOs that companies must prepare for a scaleback of fossil fuels, and that the private sector should work with governments to do so.

He warns of the disruption climate change could cause both the economy and financial markets, but sees historic investment opportunity in the energy shift. It’s a point he has made to conferences in Davos, Venice, Riyadh and Glasgow over the past year.

“This is the beginning of a long but rapidly accelerating transition—one that will unfold over many years and reshape asset prices of every type,” he said in a letter to CEOs last year.

Mr. Fink’s power, combined with his advocacy on a hot-button issue, has made him a flashpoint for activists, politicians and unions, both those who think BlackRock isn’t doing enough and others who say it’s doing too much.

Five Democratic senators wrote to Mr. Fink in 2020 saying BlackRock needed to support more shareholder resolutions to match his promises. In France that year, activists stormed BlackRock offices, flung papers and paint and scrawled “GREENWASHING” above a desk.

Tariq Fancy, a former BlackRock executive who runs an educational nonprofit, said Mr. Fink’s message is distracting people from more-dramatic measures Mr. Fancy argues are necessary, such as carbon taxes.

“It’s like giving wheatgrass to a cancer patient,” he said. “The false promise of this wheatgrass serves to delay the onset of the more painful, yet necessary, solutions.”

Hanging over the discussion is the argument that Mr. Fink is taking on a role better left to elected representatives.

In mid-2021, two Republican senators wrote to a large 401(k)-type plan expressing concern BlackRock was putting its CEO’s views ahead of investors’ needs and infusing left-leaning priorities in its voting guidelines.

Real-estate investor Sam Zell said to CNBC a few years ago: “I didn’t know Larry Fink had been made God.”

Mr. Fink says BlackRock acts as a voice for its investors. Mr. Fink, who describes himself as a conservative Democrat, says he isn’t being political when he says investors and businesses should work alongside the government to address broad problems. When companies play a role, he says, they reduce the need for governments to engage in deficit spending to tackle the issues.

“I believe in the power of American capitalism,” Mr. Fink said. “Progressives don’t believe deficits matter. I do.”

Mr. Fink says companies that embrace their responsibilities in crises can fulfill a role in society while delivering returns to shareholders. In an interview at his horse farm in Westchester County, north of New York City, he brought up an example from the previous century.

“See what Johnson & Johnson did in World War I and II,” he said. “You can call them opportunists by providing Band-Aids and gauzes and all that stuff to the military, but they were there during the crisis and stood there.”

As for BlackRock, he says, it can help investors by offering funds focused on environmental, social, and governance-minded investing, plus software to gauge climate-related risks such as drought and floods.

In 2020, he told CEOs BlackRock would be increasingly disposed to vote against boards and companies that don’t report their climate risks in formats BlackRock endorses.

Mr. Fink also presses companies to disclose more on the social effects of their business, such as the welfare of their workers or their local communities. To him, this is just good business; he says companies attentive to societal needs wind up protecting shareholder returns.

Many of BlackRock’s investors want the firm simply to track the markets through index funds, which it does in channeling money into economies from China to Argentina to Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Fink’s prominence partly reflects changes in finance, including a move away from active stockpickers and toward passive index funds. That in turn has shifted the dynamic in corporate boardrooms to give power to large asset managers such as BlackRock.

U.S. government officials have called on Mr. Fink to help them cope with crises—the pandemic-rattled financial markets in March 2020, and, a dozen years earlier, market dangers posed by the failing bank Bear Stearns.

“Treasury Secretaries and finance ministers come and go,” said David Rubenstein, the co-founder of the private-equity firm Carlyle Group Inc. “They work for someone else who can fire them tomorrow and have to build what others want them to. When you are the CEO of the biggest asset manager, you don’t have to do that.”

Laurence Fink got his start on Wall Street at First Boston, where he ran a desk that pooled together mortgages and other loans and sold off pieces of the bundles. While investors snapped up safer tranches of this financial innovation, the riskiest parts stayed on the bank’s balance sheet.

When interest rates fell in 1986, his desk lost $100 million in the second quarter. Mr. Fink was forced to leave.

He founded BlackRock two years later with the desk’s head trader, Rob Kapito, and six others. A scrappy bond manager in its early days, BlackRock lured investors with the pitch that it had the same risk technology as big banks but without the conflicts they had when they used their own money to make bets on companies.

In March 2008, BlackRock was drawn into Fed efforts to cope with the deflating housing bubble. On a Sunday, New York Fed President Tim Geithner and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson asked Mr. Fink for help as they scrambled to forestall a messy collapse of Bear Stearns, desperate to find a solution before Asian markets opened in a few hours.

Mr. Fink raced from his farm to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York after getting Mr. Geithner’s call that day.

The officials wanted Bear to be absorbed by JPMorgan Chase & Co. but that bank worried about Bear’s stash of rapidly souring mortgage assets. No one was sure what these were worth. Messrs. Geithner and Paulson asked Mr. Fink: If the Fed provided financing for a newly formed company that would absorb Bear’s bad assets, was there a reasonable chance the collateral could cover the loan?

Mr. Fink told them U.S. taxpayers wouldn’t lose money over the long run. U.S. officials moved the radioactive assets into a limited-liability company financed by the Fed so JPMorgan could be comfortable taking over Bear, which it did. BlackRock helped select which assets went into the LLC portfolio and oversaw it for the government. That program ultimately delivered gains for taxpayers.

“Larry was perfect for this job,” Mr. Paulson recalled. “No one understood the market better, and BlackRock was not teetering on the brink.”

Roughly a year later, Mr. Fink got a chance for BlackRock to acquire Barclays PLC’s money-management business. BlackRock had considered buying the business in the past. Now he pressed for a deal.

In June 2009, he celebrated the birth of his first grandchild. He held the baby, then headed to the office for an all-nighter to raise the final $3 billion needed to acquire Barclays Global Investors.

The deal lifted BlackRock’s assets under management to roughly $3 trillion and gave it an arsenal of index-mirroring funds with much lower fees than actively managed funds.

It also gave Mr. Fink a megaphone. When it was time to proof an annual letter on how BlackRock approached its duties as a shareholder, Mr. Fink initially refused to sign it. He thought the letter didn’t reflect his voice, and wanted one that did.

Now that BlackRock reached across the entire market, Mr. Fink decided the firm needed to be a counterweight to activist investors who target companies looking to make a quick buck. “There needed to be a louder voice for long-term investors,” he said.

BlackRock in 2012 released the first of Mr. Fink’s annual letters to CEOs, which have become required reading for many chief executives. He uses the letters to prod, scold and push companies to disclose more about how they provide for workers, the environment and the community at large.

The letters emerge from a monthslong writing process that involves debates by executives and occasional help from former Fed and Treasury speechwriters.

“Climate risk is investment risk,” Mr. Fink has told readers. Also, “Profits and purpose are inextricably linked.”

Starting in 2019, his letters drew the attention of a Federal Trade Commission official, Bilal Sayyed, who showed some to colleagues at the antitrust agency and asked them to think about whether BlackRock was affecting competition in industries.

The FTC later proposed a rule that a money manager must alert regulators when, across all of its funds, it oversees a certain size stake in a particular company. The proposal’s fate is in limbo in the Biden administration.

For much of his career, Mr. Fink was known for arriving at the office by 6 a.m., while traveling two weeks a month. He now starts his workday about 7:30 following a session with a trainer. His back feels the toll from years of desk work, said Mr. Fink, who is 69.

BlackRock’s board and executives, as part of discussions on succession planning, recently asked Mr. Fink to continue as CEO. He said he is planning to retire in no more than five years.

As a CEO, he can be impatient, colleagues say, and hates to be beaten. When Fidelity Investments in 2018 shook the money-management business by offering zero-fee index funds, Mr. Fink called a meeting and told his teams to pick up the phone and put BlackRock’s name in front of clients.

“Stop tripping over your d—ks,” he demanded, according to several people at the meeting. BlackRock fired back at Fidelity by cutting costs on several funds.

On March 18, 2020, with the coronavirus spreading, stocks tumbling and bond trading seizing up, Mr. Fink got another summons to Washington.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin organized an Oval office meeting, hoping the conversation would make clear to then-President Donald Trump that a government response to the pandemic needed to be big.

The president and officials debated what needed to be done and how. They discussed how much the government should spend to keep the economy afloat. “Trillions,” Mr. Fink said.

In the next week, the government unveiled a roughly $2 trillion package, some of it to fund an emergency effort to prop up financial markets.

A formal role for BlackRock wasn’t discussed at the meeting, but soon the Fed hired a BlackRock unit to help it pump money into corporate bonds—a first for the central bank—and other markets. The markets stabilized, and bond ETFs gained the stamp of approval as a central bank tool.

Part of BlackRock’s assignment was helping the Fed buy bond exchange-traded funds, including BlackRock’s own. In the rush to head off a deep recession, the Fed didn’t bid out the job. it simply hired BlackRock.

In April that year, three Democratic lawmakers urged the government to provide safeguards to avoid cementing BlackRock’s importance to the economy through the firm’s crisis work.

Mr. Fink said he understands why BlackRock’s role was controversial. The firm estimates it lost money on the work, given the resources and time consumed, said people familiar with the matter. It didn’t charge fees on any ETFs in the portfolio it ran for the Fed and rebated fees from its own ETFs back to the Fed.

Mr. Fink has cut back his travel during the pandemic but invites one or two CEOs each week to his Manhattan townhouse for dinner. He says they order take-out food and do the dishes afterward. He spends Thursday evenings to Sunday afternoons at his farm, where he has installed a desk in a barn filled with American folk art.

There, he has planted some 400 American chestnut trees as well as apple trees, elms and maples through the years. Mr. Fink gets excited as he identifies each species.

Through the day, the duck ringtone on his cellphone goes off. When company executives phone to cajole, persuade or threaten BlackRock on how it should handle proxy votes on executive pay or climate proposals, Mr. Fink hands them off to a BlackRock group that interacts with companies.

Though he is in discussions on rules guiding the firm’s votes, he removes himself from decisions on any one vote.

“I tell them factually that is not my job,” he said.

Among thousands of recent shareholder votes, BlackRock wielded ballots in ways that helped to shake up Toshiba Corp.’s board, elect three board members at Exxon Mobil Corp. in a referendum that revealed discontent with the oil company’s climate strategy, and oppose an executive-pay package at AT&T Inc.

In 2017, Mr. Fink was part of a group of CEOs serving as a sounding board for former President Trump on business policies. After the racially motivated and violent clash in Charlottesville, Va., that year, Mr. Fink huddled with another member, PepsiCo Inc.’s then-CEO Indra Nooyi, over what both considered Mr. Trump’s insufficient condemnation of those behind the violence, and the two decided to step down from the group. Some other CEOs arrived at the same position, leading the president to dissolve it.

Three former BlackRock employees have key positions in the Biden administration, including the firm’s former head of sustainable investing. Mr. Fink says he has never raised money for any presidential candidate and has donated to both Republicans and Democrats over the years.

BlackRock published a study in 2019 on how it said climate change and events related to it affect the municipal-bond market and how extreme weather threatens infrastructure. The firm forecast that 58% of U.S. metro areas would suffer gross domestic product losses of at least 1% over the next decades if they didn’t prepare for climate risks.

With its index funds, BlackRock is locked into investing in all kinds of companies, from coal miners to wind farms. In portfolios run by active managers, the firm has scaled back thermal coal exposure, as it pledged to, and said last year it would flag companies that posed significant climate risk for potential selling.

Addressing a meeting in Venice of leaders from the Group of 20 nations last July, Mr. Fink urged ministers to create more private-public partnerships for renewable-technology investments.

One idea he pushed was authorizing the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to shoulder the first losses on sustainable-energy projects, so other investors would feel safe putting in money. It was an echo of how the U.S. in 2008 fenced off the worst Bear Stearns holdings to encourage JPMorgan to take over the firm.

In the lead-up to the Glasgow climate summit, Mr. Fink asked other finance CEOs to press government leaders to create incentives for investors to fund alternative-energy sources. He urged other executives to drop calls for carbon taxes, saying their cost would trigger a backlash, according to people familiar with the matter.

He also helped steer debates among finance executives on steps needed for the steel, aviation and oil-and-gas sectors to reduce carbon emissions, and on how society should account for the growing pile of assets that would be deemed worthless along the way.

“Society is trying in certain instances to pressure companies to do more, including at times what ought to be the role of government,” said Evan Greenberg, the CEO of insurance company Chubb Ltd. , who has gone fly-fishing with Mr. Fink.

He added: “I believe Larry chose consciously to approach it as an opportunity, rather than something he is expected to do.”

Updated: 2-9-2022

BlackRock Planning To Offer Crypto Trading, Sources Say. Could This Make Spot Bitcoin Approval ETF Inevitable?

Clients would be able to trade crypto through the firm’s Aladdin investment platform, said one of the sources.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is preparing to offer a cryptocurrency trading service to its investor clients, according to three people with knowledge of the plans.

The New York-based company, which manages over $10 trillion in assets for institutions, plans to enter the cryptocurrency space with “client support trading and then with their own credit facility,” one of the people said. In other words, clients would be able to borrow from BlackRock by pledging crypto assets as collateral.

One of the people said BlackRock will allow its clients – which include public pension schemes, endowments and sovereign wealth funds – to trade cryptocurrency through Aladdin (short for “Asset, Liability, Debt and Derivative Investment Network”), the asset manager’s integrated investment management platform. The timetable for unveiling the service is unclear.

The asset manager may have been telegraphing its intentions as early as June when it began hiring for an Aladdin blockchain strategy lead. These days it’s taken as known that Wall Street banks and large financial institutions are edging into crypto, with the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citi carefully choosing strategies.

BlackRock has already sent some positive signals to the market regarding crypto, including trading CME bitcoin futures, as per a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company also has plans to launch the iShares Blockchain and Tech ETF, an exchange-traded fund tracking an index composed of companies involved in crypto technologies in the U.S. and abroad.

BlackRock also owns 16.3% of MicroStrategy, whose CEO, Michael Saylor, regularly trumpets news about his firm’s bitcoin holdings.

A second person with knowledge of the plans said BlackRock was “looking to get hands-on with outright crypto” and was “looking at providers in the space.”

A third person referred to a working group of “approximately 20 or so” inside BlackRock that is evaluating crypto, adding, “They see all the flow that everyone else is getting and want to start making some money from this.”

Updated: 4-12-2022

Blackrock And Others Infuse $400 Million Into Stablecoin Issuer Circle

BlackRock joined three other firms to invest $400 million in Circle, the issuer of the second largest stablecoin (USDC). The world’s largest a*set manager will also act as the primary manager of USDC reserves to help explore the stablecoin’s use in capital markets.

“It’s tremendous to have Blackrock in particular put their confidence behind a critical part of the infrastructure that we think has the opportunity to be a huge part of the way the future financial and economic system works in the United States,” Jeremy Allaire, Circle’s founder and CEO, told Yahoo Finance.

Along with BlackRock, Circle’s private capital raise of $400 million comes from Fidelity Management and Research, the London-based hedge fund Marshall Wace, and fintech asset manager, Fin Capital. BlackRock was not the lead investor in this funding round.

The news comes a month after BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink wrote in a letter to shareholders that the firm was “studying digital currencies, stablecoins, and the underlying technologies.”

Unlike other crypto a*sets, the value of stablecoins aren’t supposed to fluctuate if properly managed. Instead, these tokens are pegged to another a*set, most often the U.S. dollar.

Currently, the total circulating supply of USDC amounts to $51 billion, down by $2 billion as of the stablecoin’s February 28 attestation. According to Allaire, USDC’s reserves are composed of cash and short-duration U.S. Treasury bonds that are held in custody by BNY Mellon.

As part of this announcement, Blackrock will take a principal role in managing USDC’s reserves, which should enhance USDC’s legitimacy in the eyes of crypto-native and traditional investors alike.

While the broader partnership between the two firms could prospect a wide range of applications for USDC in traditional capital markets, Circle’s Allaire said the stablecoin could bring more efficiency to capital markets by improving transaction settlement time and finality while lowering counterparty risk.

“This is an opportunity to invest for what I really think is going to be the future plumbing of the financial system and given the role [BlackRock] plays with $11 trillion in a*sets under management, I think they care a lot about how the financial system is going to work in the future,” Allaire added.

As for Circle, its plans for a SPAC aren’t over, according to Allaire. While the company announced in July of last year that it would enter public markets through a special purpose acquisition company with plans to list in the fourth quarter of the year, it renegotiated the terms of the deal in mid-February, allowing it to raise private capital up to a 15% discount at a $9 billion valuation.

This “re-SPAC” as Allaire called it, is a less conventional route for companies going public through the investment vehicle. According to Allaire, Circle hopes to “de-SPAC” and list publicly in the third quarter of this year.

Updated: 5-10-2022

BlackRock’s $100 Million London Trader Turns Bearish Amid Record Losses

* Alister Hibbert Shifts Strategy With Stock Markets Tumbling
* The Strategic Equity Hedge Fund Is Down 13% This Year

BlackRock Inc. star money manager Alister Hibbert has turned bearish as his hedge fund endures its worst-ever losses amid a sharp decline in stocks.

The BlackRock Strategic Equity Hedge Fund tumbled 13% this year through April, a person with knowledge of the matter said. That exceeds its worst annual decline of 11%.

The money manager, who has profited from the historic surge in stocks since starting the fund in 2011, turned net short for the first time ever this month, said the person. His portfolio was net long about 35% at the end of last year.

The reversal marks a seismic shift underway in global markets as soaring inflation forces central banks to end quantitative easing and raise interest rates. That has led to a selloff in markets with growth stocks, led by the technology sector, falling further in a setback for equity-focused hedge funds.

Hibbert has run his fund with a tilt toward growth stocks and owned shares such as Microsoft Corp. and Mastercard Inc. He flagged his cautious outlook earlier this year, telling clients that the strongest phase of economic recovery, characterized by soaring earnings and cyclical performance, was now over. The fund had about $9 billion of assets on Dec. 31.

“It is clear that the normalization of the economy post-pandemic is not going to be an entirely orderly process,” he wrote in a letter to investors in March.

A BlackRock spokesman declined to comment.

BlackRock shares have tumbled about 34% this year. In a March letter to investors, Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink expressed disappointment in the stock’s performance and cited challenging markets for the decline.

London-based Hibbert has long been one of the best-paid risk-takers at the world’s biggest asset manager and key to BlackRock’s expansion into active management and driven-performance fees. He earned a nine-figure sum, more than triple the size of Fink’s $30 million payout in 2020.

Hibbert started the hedge fund more than a decade ago with just $13 million and turned it into one of the largest long/short money pools, generating annualized returns of almost 17% until last year. The fund has had only two annual declines. Hibbert also runs a concentrated long only fund — BlackRock Global Unconstrained Equity Fund — which is down about 20% this year, according to Bloomberg data.

Equity hedge funds have been the worst performing broad strategy so far this year, losing 6.4% through April, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Updated: 9-29-2022

Amundi, Blackrock Stumble In China As Wealth Products Disappoint

* The Money Managers Launched Wealth Offerings In Past 2 Years

* Products Struggling Amid Turbulent Markets, High Expectations

China may be a lucrative wealth management market, but it’s also a difficult one to crack.

Two of the world’s biggest investors, Amundi SA and BlackRock Inc., have stumbled since starting selling wealth products through joint ventures in the country over the past two years.

Chinese retail investors have criticized Amundi for falling short of performance targets, while local press have highlighted how some BlackRock’s offerings are making losses.

The slow start comes at a turbulent time for markets, as onshore bond yields slide and an index of the nation’s shares falls more than 20% this year.

China’s unique wealth management culture — until recently, banks and others had promised guaranteed high returns — is adding to the global money managers’ woes, as irate local investors demand better performance.

“They entered the market at a difficult time,” said Harry Handley, a senior associate at Shanghai-based consultancy Z-Ben Advisors Ltd. “For fixed income-focused Amundi, it faces an environment where onshore yields are falling,” he said. For BlackRock, which focuses more on stocks, “equity volatility has been high and the CSI 300” — a gauge of Chinese equities — “has been weak.”

Amundi, Europe’s largest money manager with $1.9 trillion in assets under management, launched a joint venture with Bank of China Ltd.’s wealth management unit in 2020, the first after China allowed global firms to participate in the sector.

BlackRock, which oversees $8.5 trillion, started the second with a subsidiary of China Construction Bank Corp. in 2021.

Amundi BOC Wealth Management Co. began selling so-called wealth management products in China in 2020, placing at least 80% of the underlying assets for most offerings in debt.

Like peers, it sets what’s called a performance benchmark for each of them, which can take various forms from an exact percentage like 3% to a range or a premium on top of a market rate.

These benchmarks came into use after the country started to overhaul the asset management industry, including the 29 trillion yuan ($4.1 trillion) wealth products sector, in 2018, which included banning promises of guaranteed returns.

The benchmarks are headaches for global money managers. If a company sets the rate too low, it won’t attract customers. If it sets it too high and falls short, investors may take their business elsewhere.

To make matters worse, Chinese banks and others have traditionally reached their targets by investing in what’s called non-standard assets, such as risky, opaque and less-liquid debt that isn’t listed on public markets.

It’s a Catch-22 for global asset managers that may not be willing to do the same.

“Amundi made it clear from the outset of this joint venture that it will stay away from the shadow-banking exposure that is a yield-enhancing staple of products from local banks,” Z-Ben’s Handley said. “It is essentially a trade-off between instilling global risk management standards and meeting onshore performance expectations.”

Almost 90% of wealth management products met or exceeded their benchmarks in the first half of the year, according to research firm PY Standard.

All but five of the 30 Amundi BOC offerings that had matured as of Sept. 8 fell short of theirs, registration data show.

Retail investors have criticized the Amundi BOC products on social media sites such as Zhihu, the Chinese equivalent of the question-and-answer website Quora, for giving much lower gains than their benchmarks.

Amundi BOC said in an emailed response that wealth management products witnessed fluctuations in the first half of the year due to swings in bond and equity markets.

The company’s first batch to mature, which were all one-year, fixed-income products, still delivered positive returns even as markets fell for half the time, it said.

To be sure, non-standard debt, which was widely used to prop up returns before 2018, accounted for just 7% of wealth management products’ assets as of June 30, down almost 6 percentage points from a year earlier, according to official data.

“Some underperforming fixed income-plus products” — which invest in debt and, for example, equities — “may not have done well in timing the market this year,” said Zhang Wenchao, president of Shanghai Yunhan Asset Management Co. “Trading capabilities are key for the ‘plus’ part.”

BlackRock CCB Wealth Management Co. initially took a different approach, starting with two equity products. Equity offerings accounted for less than 0.3% of all wealth management products in China as of June 30, according to official data. Fixed income-focused ones make up 94%.

Two of the joint venture’s four products as of late July were sitting on losses, the highest share of loss-making products among wealth management firms, local media 21st Century Business Herald reported last month.

BlackRock CCB now has five products, two of which focus mostly on fixed income while one is a more balanced hybrid of equities and debt. The two equities offerings are still loss-making.

Still, as of the end of last month, the equity products were beating their benchmarks, according to Bloomberg calculations.

BlackRock is replacing the head of the China wealth management unit, it said in an emailed statement Thursday.

A spokesperson for BlackRock said it’s committed to offering a range of products to Chinese investors.

Amundi BOC had $11.6 billion in assets under management as of June 30. BlackRock CCB raised more than 7 billion yuan with its five products. The figures are a tiny fraction of the money overseen by Amundi and BlackRock globally.

The stakes are about to get higher. Wealth management products were included as investment options in the government’s framework for establishing an individual pension system earlier this year.

The plan is to allow people to open pension accounts that will have tax benefits. Asset managers may raise close to $700 billion under the program in 10 years, brokerage China International Capital Corp. estimates.

Wealth management products are generally a profitable business. Nineteen firms focused on selling them reported a combined $2.3 billion in profit in the first half of 2022, up 68% from a year earlier, according to data compiled by local trade media China Fund News.

Amundi, which won customers partly by setting hard-to-reach performance benchmarks, must decide whether to lower them for future offerings. In a sense, both it and BlackRock are learning the difficulties of China’s unique market.

People’s expectations about wealth management products were shaped over many years, said Zhou Yiqin, president of GuanShao Information Consulting Center, which specializes in financial regulations. “It may take five to 10 years to gradually change them.”

Updated: 10-13-2022

BlackRock Profit Falls 16%

Firm’s assets under management decreased to $8 trillion, from $8.5 trillion in the second quarter.

A souring market weighed on investing giant BlackRock Inc. in the third quarter, pushing profit down 16%.

The world’s largest asset manager reported net income of $1.41 billion, down from $1.68 billion in the same period a year earlier.

Earnings amounted to $9.25 a share. That exceeded the $7.06 expected by analysts polled by FactSet.

Revenue dipped 15% to $4.31 billion, above analysts’ estimates of $4.2 billion.

Central banks including the Federal Reserve are raising interest rates to try to cool red-hot inflation, adding stress to a market that is increasingly jittery over a possible recession.

Stocks started the third quarter relatively strong, but soon headed lower as the Fed made increasingly clear that its rate increases are here to stay.

BlackRock is a top provider of exchange-traded funds and other low-cost alternatives that track market indexes, and demand for passive investing has helped fuel the firm’s growth.

BlackRock is also a large provider of actively managed investments, which include businesses like stock-and bond-picking funds.

Investors’ faith in the market declined, evidenced by slowing inflows of $17 billion, down from $75 billion a year ago.

The firm’s assets under management were about $8 trillion, down from $8.5 trillion in the second quarter. That marks the third quarter-over-quarter decline in a row.

BlackRock ended last year with $10.01 trillion in assets, the first time any money manager surpassed that milestone.

BlackRock’s base management fees—fees not tied to performance that the firm receives for administering fund holdings—dipped 10% from a year ago to $3.53 billion.

Performance fees from the firm’s actively managed funds fell 76% to $82 million. BlackRock said that partly reflected lower fees from a single hedge fund.

Its technology remains the asset manager’s bright spot. Revenue from Aladdin, its proprietary software that helps investors manage their portfolios and assess risk, rose 6% to $338 million.

Updated: 6-15-2023

BlackRock ($10 Trillion AUM) Files For Spot Bitcoin ETF

BlackRock may not be easy for the SEC to turn away. It’s the world’s largest asset manager with more than $10 trillion in assets under management (AUM) and the company and its CEO Larry Fink has political power to possibly match that of the SEC and its leader Gary Gensler.

The world’s largest asset manager moving forward with a bitcoin ETF is viewed by some in the industry as an endorsement of the cryptocurrency at a time when the SEC is taking action against some of its biggest players, including Coinbase.

“As the overall ETF industry leader, a BlackRock spot bitcoin ETF could gather significant assets quickly, even if just a small percentage of cryptocurrency assets went into it,” said Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi.

“BlackRock’s increasing engagement shows Bitcoin continues to be an asset of interest for some of the world’s largest financial institutions,” said Sui Chung, CEO of CF Benchmarks, a subsidiary of crypto exchange Kraken.

The move is especially impactful for the U.S. crypto industry now, participants said.

If an asset manager as big as BlackRock is making such a move at a time when crypto regulation is being tightened, “they probably have done sufficient due diligence to know there is a decent chance for the ETF to get approved by the regulators,” according to Matt Zhang, founder and managing partner at Hivemind.

A representative at BlackRock didn’t return requests seeking comment.

In the current regulatory environment, BlackRock’s filing for a bitcoin ETF “says a lot about institutional confidence in at least bitcoin,” according to David Tawil, president and co-founder at ProChain Capital.

It also may bode well for the whole crypto industry, Tawil said. “You’d only apply for a crypto ETF if you believe in the longevity of the asset class,” Tawil said in a phone interview.

While the SEC named several cryptocurrencies, such as BNB, Solana Cardano and Polygon as securities in the lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase, Chairman Gary Gensler has repeatedly said that bitcoin was the only cryptocurrency he was prepared to publicly label a commodity, rather than a security.

The SEC’s recent actions are “actually not bad for bitcoin,” said Peter Eberle, chief investment officer at Castle Funds. “Perhaps BlackRock saw that and has decided that they want to make a move in that direction,” noted Eberle in a call.

“We have filed a registration statement with the SEC, and due to regulatory filing restrictions, we are not able to provide further comment,” a BlackRock spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.

BlackRock’s attempt at a spot Bitcoin ETF lands amid digital asset-manager Grayscale Investments LLC’s high-profile legal battle with the SEC. Grayscale sued the regulator after it denied a bid to convert the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust into a physically backed ETF, citing fraud and manipulation concerns related to the underlying market.

“Perhaps BlackRock is in agreement with us in Bloomberg Intelligence that Grayscale is going to win their lawsuit with the SEC and they want to make sure their hat is in the ring in the event of an approval,” Seyffart said.

BlackRock has prior dealings with the crypto space. The company had partnered with Coinbase on making it easier for institutional investors to manage and trade Bitcoin.

BlackRock filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday for a spot bitcoin ETF, which would hold the cryptocurrency as the underlying asset and track its price.

At least a dozen asset managers have previously filed for spot bitcoin ETFs and been rejected by the Securities and Exchange Commision. The regulator has argued that such products are vulnerable to fraud and market manipulation.

Coinbase Global would be the custodian for the fund’s bitcoin holdings, according to the filing.

BlackRock declined to comment.

The iShares Bitcoin Trust aims to be the first ETF with the cryptocurrency itself as the underlying asset, rather than futures contracts. Futures let traders bet on whether an underlying market such as oil, gold or, in this case, bitcoin, will rise or fall.

Futures trade separately from the underlying asset they are derived from; those values can deviate, sometimes widely.

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, the crypto asset manager which operates the largest bitcoin futures ETF, is currently suing the SEC, arguing that it should be able to convert its ETF into a spot bitcoin offering. Grayscale has said it expects a verdict in the fall, though a ruling could come sooner.

The BlackRock filing could be to facilitate a fast launch in case a court rules against the SEC’s previous decisions, said Rosenbluth.

The investment firm joins a long line of applicants; ARK is among those still waiting to hear from the SEC, and Grayscale has appealed its rejection.

BlackRock has filed an application for a Bitcoin spot exchange traded fund (ETF). The investment company is the world’s largest and it would be the first crypto spot ETF in the United States, if it receives approval.

According to a filling by the Nasdaq stock exchange with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Coinbase Custody Trust Company would be the custodian of the fund’s Bitcoin holdings and Bank of New York Mellon would custody its fiat.

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust would be traded as Commodity-Based Trust Shares.

According to the application filed on June 15:

“The Shares have been designed to remove the obstacles represented by the complexities and operational burdens involved in a direct investment in bitcoin.”

The Bitcoin price will be updated “at least” every 15 seconds during regular market trading using the CF Benchmarks Index.

The Blackrock ETF filing is live, and it’s * SPOT *

“The assets of the Trust consist primarily of bitcoin held by a custodian on behalf of the Trust.”

— Swan (@Swan) June 15, 2023

The document notes that previously approved spot exchange traded products in the commodities and currency markets “are generally unregulated and […] the Commission relied on the underlying futures market” as “the basis for approving” trust shares in the past. Thus:

“As such, the regulated market of significant size test does not require that the spot bitcoin market be regulated in order for the Commission to approve this proposal.”

The SEC has not approved a spot Bitcoin ETF so far, despite numerous applicants. Grayscale took the SEC to appeals court to argue for the soundness of the Bitcoin futures after the SEC rejected its application to create a spot Bitcoin ETF.

Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest and European investment firm 21Shares have also been pressing for spot Bitcoin ETF approval, filing their third applications in April.

The world’s first spot traded Bitcoin ETF was Canada’s Purpose Bitcoin ETF, set up in early 2021.

The iShares unit of fund management giant BlackRock (BLK) filed paperwork Thursday afternoon with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the formation of a spot bitcoin (BTC) ETF.

To be named the iShares Bitcoin Trust, the fund’s assets are to “consist primarily of bitcoin held by a custodian on behalf of the Trust,” according to the filing. That custodian will by crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN), said the filing.

CoinDesk earlier on Thursday reported on BlackRock’s intention to soon file for a bitcoin ETF.

Though approving a number of futures-based bitcoin ETFs, the SEC has notably rejected other fund management company attempts at opening a spot bitcoin ETF, including those from Grayscale, VanEck, and WisdomTree.

“The proposed ETF is benchmarked against the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate,” said Sui Chung, CEO of CF Benchmarks, a subsidiary of crypto exchange Kraken, commenting on the filing.

“CF Benchmarks takes price data exclusively from cryptocurrency exchanges that adhere to the highest possible standards of market integrity and transparency. This protects investors as products benchmarked against it can then consistently and reliably track the spot price of the underlying asset,” Chung added.

The move comes at a time when crypto industry is reeling from U.S. regulatory crackdown, which recently saw the SEC suing crypto exchange Coinbase and Binance.

The market sentiment, following the filing of the ETF application by a TradFi giant, seem to have gotten a slight boost as the price of bitcoin has gained a bit on the news, rising to just shy of $25,600.

Updated: 6-16-2023

BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF ‘Is The Best Thing To Happen’ To BTC, Or Is It?

Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz was among those over the moon with the news, others warn it could be the start of a major institutional takeover.

BlackRock’s latest filing for a spot Bitcoin (BTC) trust will drive investors’ confidence in Bitcoin and may even be “the best thing that could happen” to BTC, according to some crypto industry observers — but others warn of a hidden cost.

During an interview on June 16, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said the approval of BlackRock’s ETF application would be “the best thing that could happen to $BTC.”

“I say a Hail Mary every night that Larry Fink and @blackrock pull off a @bitcoin ETF,” Novogratz said on the Fox News segment, according to a tweet by host Liz Claman.

Fun being on @LizClaman show!! And yes, @BlackRock getting a $BTC ETF through would be the best thing that could happen to $BTC. https://t.co/2fFBeB9eyo

— Mike Novogratz (@novogratz) June 16, 2023

Meanwhile, cryptocurrency analyst James Edwards of Finder.com — a financial product comparison website — told Cointelegraph that the timing of BlackRock’s filing should provide “confidence” in both Bitcoin as an asset and also Coinbase in its upcoming legal battle fight with the SEC:

“BlackRock’s willingness to press on with a Bitcoin ETF at a time when the SEC is on a warpath against crypto is very telling. It shows confidence in Bitcoin’s status as a commodity — rather than a security,” he said, adding:

“It’s unlikely that BlackRock would push forward with an ETF of this nature without serious consultation with regulators and confidence in Bitcoin’s future legal status.”

BlackRock’s intention to use Coinbase Custody to control funds should also be seen as a massive confidence booster for Coinbase as it prepares its legal defense, Edwards explained.

He added that BlackRock — the world’s largest asset manager — likely wouldn’t partner with Coinbase had they not been “confident” in Coinbase’s legal position.

The Downside

Others argue that the traditional investment giant’s latest moves undermine the “ethos” of decentralized cryptocurrencies, or, that the company may find a way to profit from retail investors.

Investor Scott Melker explained in a June 16 interview that such an approval would be a disservice to crypto-native innovators who built the industry:

“As good as this may be for institutional adoption of the space, it kind of violates the ethos, it is a bit of a dishonest push away from the people who built the industry in the United States.”

Cinneamhain Ventures partner and Ethereum bull Adam Cochran believes that BlackRock will swoop in on the “discounted coins” of retail investors, a theory also shared by Melker.

Blackrock ETF… https://t.co/3g77QNdAun

— The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) June 15, 2023

Steven Lubka, a managing director at Swan Bitcoin, shared a similar view, predicting that BTC will reach $1 million, but few retail investors would reap the rewards because the bulk of BTC will be owned by BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and other ETF issuers.

Melker added that Wall Street firms will continue to move into the space and that U.S. regulators will likely “choose them” over incumbent platforms.

“I would not recommend that anyone touch this product with a ten foot pole,” said Marty Bent, of Tales from the Crypt, a crypto-focused blog. “If GBTC GBTC [Grayscale Bitcoin Trust] has taught us anything it’s that this particular trust structure is terrible for the investor.”

“You throw cash into this product and pay fees to underperform bitcoin in the long-run. The only difference with BlackRock’s trust seems to be that you can take the bitcoin in-kind if you wish,” he said.

So far the impact on the price of bitcoin BTCUSD appears minimal. The same came be said for crypto’s other most popular unit, ethereum ETHUSD.

ARK Invest, Grayscale, Fidelity, Galaxy Digital, VanEck, Valkyrie Investments, NYDIG, SkyBridge and WisdomTree are among the other investment firms that have applied to the SEC for similar Bitcoin and cryptocurrency ETFs.

Since the news was first reported, the price of BTC has increased 2.2% to $25,584 at the time of writing.

Interestingly, the Fear & Greed Crypto Index increased from 41 to 47 — leaving the fear zone — following the news of BlackRock’s filing.

Bitcoin Shorts Lose $16M As BlackRock ETF Filing Sparks Bullish Outlook

Total crypto market capitalization rose nominally with dogecoin (DOGE) leading gains among major tokens.

Hopes surrounding a potential U.S. Bitcoin ETF filing by investment giant BlackRock spurred a slight change in market movements early on Friday, fueling a bullish outlook among some traders.

On Thursday, CoinDesk reported that BlackRock planned to offer a Bitcoin ETF with crypto exchange Coinbase serving as custodian.

This was confirmed later after a filing showed the company’s iShares fund management unit filed paperwork for the formation of a spot bitcoin (BTC) ETF.

“An estimated 20% of Americans have now owned bitcoin at some point. BlackRock’s proposed ETF potentially offers the other 80% an option that is altogether more familiar and accessible,” said Sui Chung, CEO of CF Benchmarks, in an email to CoinDesk.

“BlackRock’s increasing engagement shows Bitcoin continues to be an asset of interest for some of the world’s largest financial institutions.”

Bitcoin quickly regained the $25,500 level early Friday, erasing losses from the past two days when it fell to as low as $24,860.

The move provided some respite to major tokens such as Polygon Network’s MATIC and Cardano’s ADA, which jumped nominally to ease some losses from a two-day slide.

Dogecoin (DOGE) led gains among major tokens with a 4% move in the past 24 hours, with litecoin (LTC) gaining 3.3%.

As such, the market strength of bitcoin impacted shorts – or bets against – the asset with BTC-tracked futures seeing over $16 million in short liquidations in the past 24 hours.

This figure was lesser-than-usual due to large declines in the past week, causing some traders to risk lesser capital than usual.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has previously rejected other attempts by fund managers at listing a spot bitcoin ETF, including those from Grayscale, VanEck, and WisdomTree.

BlackRock May Have Found Way To Get SEC Approval For Spot Bitcoin ETF

The hedge fund included a surveillance-sharing agreement in its proposal, which could eliminate the risk of market manipulation related to bitcoin.

Blackrock’s (BLK) iShares Bitcoin Trust application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week might stand a better chance than previous attempts by other fund managers thanks to the promise of a “surveillance-sharing agreement” between exchanges.

Buried on page 36 of Blackrock’s 19b-4 filing with the SEC, the company states that to mitigate against market manipulation, it will bring in Nasdaq (NDAQ) to enter into a surveillance-sharing agreement with an operator of a spot trading platform for Bitcoin (BTC).

Surveillance-sharing agreements allow for the sharing of information about market trading activity, clearing activity, and customer identification, allowing for little possibility of market manipulation.

BlackRock’s proposed surveillance-sharing agreement, dubbed the “Spot BTC SSA,” is what makes this application different, and not simply the company’s size as the largest asset manager in the world, said Graeme Moore, Head of Tokenization, Polymesh Association.

“The SEC is very concerned with market manipulation related to Bitcoin prices, and has cited this in almost, if not all, previous rejections,” Moore said in an emailed statement.

“This is because the SEC’s view is that Coinbase and others are not regulated as exchanges and therefore cannot be trusted to ‘prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices’.”

However, industry veteran Dave Weisberger, CEO & Co-Founder of CoinRoutes, countered that any such surveillance-sharing agreement is superfluous.

“Why should it be necessary?” Weisberger said in an interview with CoinDesk.” Because Kraken, Coinbase, ItBit, Lmax and Bitstamp — all of their data feeds are public,” he added.

“The SEC could clearly get all this data or hire someone to feed it to them. You can know every trade in every order, and that will give the SEC the ability to say, ‘Hey, this looks like a manipulative trade. So who did it?’.

The SEC has previously highlighted the importance of a surveillance-sharing agreements.

In a notice in January regarding Cboe Digital’s request to list and trade shares of the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF, agency officials said that “an exchange that lists bitcoin-based ETPs can meet its obligations under Exchange Act Section by demonstrating that the exchange has a comprehensive surveillance-sharing agreement with a regulated market of significant size related to the underlying or reference bitcoin assets.”

Blackrock’s iShares filed paperwork with the SEC on Thursday afternoon for the formation of a spot bitcoin ETF. The move comes after several other ETF proposals, including those of Grayscale, VanEck, and WisdomTree have previously been rejected.

BlackRock’s Spot Bitcoin ETF Not The Same As Grayscale’s Product, Experts Say

While both are technically trusts, there’s one key distinction which makes Blackrock’s proposed investment vehicle an exchange traded fund (ETF).

Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) terminology can sometimes be tricky, and fund management giant BlackRock’s application for a spot Bitcoin ETF has raised some questions.

To review, BlackRock’s (BLK) iShares unit on Thursday filed an application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for creation of the iShares Bitcoin Trust.

The name and other details of the proposal sparked some confusion among industry experts as to whether BlackRock was applying for an ETF or a trust with properties similar to the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC).

The answer is both.

“It’s a reminder of just how complex ETF terminology is,” Noelle Acheson, editor of Crypto is Macro Now, said. “Technically, BlackRock’s proposal is for a trust, but it’s a trust that allows redemptions, so it functions just like an ETF.”

In this sense, Acheson noted, the iShares product is nothing like GBTC, which has no redemption mechanism. “The market hears ‘trust’ and thinks it will be like GBTC with no redemptions, but that’s not the case here,” Acheson said.

The key distinction is that an ETF for spot bitcoin “would be able to buy bitcoin at the end of the trading day to bring the fund’s assets in line with its trading price. A trust does not have the ability to do this,” Joe Consorti, market analyst at The Bitcoin Layer said.

A trust will thus occasionally trade higher or lower than the value of its underlying assets – sometimes substantially – an issue currently facing GBTC which has been changing hands at a wide discount (currently about 40%) to its net asset value for years.

Grayscale has been attempting to convert its trust to a spot bitcoin ETF for some time, but has been rejected in that effort by the SEC, which cited worry about market manipulation, among other concerns.

BlackRock is hoping to get past the market manipulation, with CoinDesk reporting earlier on Friday that the fund manager’s application includes a promise of a “surveillance-sharing agreement” between exchanges.

BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF Would Be A Big Deal

And it doesn’t really matter if it’s technically a trust.

Well, well. BlackRock (BLK) entered the chat early last year and it finally spoke up.

BlackRock’s iShares unit filed paperwork Thursday afternoon with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the formation of a spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF).

As with all things perpetually online, many are tying themselves up and tripping over semantics. Is this proposed fund actually an ETF or just a trust? The question seems odd, but the tippity top of BlackRock’s S-1 filing sports this as the name of the proposed fund: iShares Bitcoin Trust.

Before going further, as Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas tweeted, this is exactly how the SPDR Gold Shares ($GLD) ETF works. It’s a trust, but it acts like an ETF.

Without getting into it too deeply, if the iShares Bitcoin Trust is approved and functions with daily creations and redemptions, then it would basically look and act like an ETF. Who cares if it’s technically a “trust?”

The answer is “many people.” The market has some consternation with the word trust in the context of publicly-traded bitcoin instruments given Grayscale’s bitcoin product, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC).

GBTC holds bitcoin and shares can be purchased over-the-counter for price exposure to the underlying bitcoin. There’s consternation because GBTC shares trade at a steep discount to net asset value.

In plain English, according to Grayscale’s website, the market value of a share of GBTC is $13.40 even though the amount of bitcoin held per share is $23.00 (as of June 15, 2023).

That’s bad for many reasons. But this shouldn’t happen with BlackRock’s product since it’s basically an ETF. Really though the interesting conversation to be had about this technically-a-trust-but-basically-an-ETF has to do with how this will affect exchanges and paper bitcoin.

GBTC Discount Narrows After BlackRock’s Filing For Spot Bitcoin ETF

Fund manager Grayscale is currently in a legal standoff with the SEC after the agency denied an application to convert the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an exchange-traded fund.

The discount on the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) share price to net asset value narrowed Friday, dropping to a near one-month low a day after investment management giant BlackRock filed for a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).

The price of GBTC shares jumped more than 8% over the past 24 hours to near $14, TradingView data shows, outperforming the digital asset the fund holds. Over the same period, bitcoin (BTC) rose 3.5% to $25,800.

The discount is currently at around 40%, according to CoinDesk’s calculations. This is the lowest level since mid-May, down from 44% earlier this week, but still significantly higher than the 35% level it reached earlier this spring, according to YCharts.

Many crypto observers keenly awaited how GBTC’s discount would react to the news about BlackRock, the world’s largest ETF issuer and a mainstay in the traditional finance world, attempting to register a spot BTC ETF with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Multiple investment managers, including WisdomTree, VanEck, Ark Investment Management with 21Shares, have tried to register such a product over the past two years, but the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected all applications, so far.

BlackRock’s application, however, could be a game-changer, analysts have noted, given its clout and track record. The investment firm has won regulators’ approval for ETFs in 575 cases versus a sole denial, Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas tweeted.

Grayscale – a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, CoinDesk’s parent company – is currently in a legal standoff with the SEC, after the firm appealed the agency’s decision to deny converting its closed-end GBTC fund into an ETF.

The so-called “GBTC discount” developed because the fund doesn’t allow redemptions, so investors can only sell their shares on secondary markets.

While crypto markets rallied in the past years, GBTC shares traded at a significant premium to net asset value. Notably, crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital made outsized bets to harvest the premium, then spectacularly blew up when the fund’s shares turned into a discount as crypto prices cratered last year.

Updated: 6-20-2023

Bitcoin Jumps On Speculation BlackRock ‘May Know Something’

* At Least Three Issuers Have Filed Plans Since BlackRock Filing

* The SEC Has Resisted Allowing Spot Bitcoin ETFs, Citing Risks

BlackRock Inc.’s surprise filing for a US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund last week has led to a flurry of similar applications from rival issuers and speculation that the asset manager has key insights that will lead to approval of its application.

Bitcoin has jumped more than 20% since the filing to more than $30,000. On Tuesday, Invesco Ltd. renewed its application for the physically-backed Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF within hours of WisdomTree’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the WisdomTree Bitcoin Trust. Days earlier, Bitwise submitted plans for a similar vehicle.

The rush of applications comes in the wake of BlackRock’s bid to launch the iShares Bitcoin Trust, which landed with US regulators last week.

Given BlackRock’s status as the world’s biggest money manager with roughly $9 trillion, the filing is being taken as a sign that the SEC might finally give the green light to a physically-backed Bitcoin ETF — a structure the regulator has repeatedly rejected, citing risks such as fraud and manipulation in the spot market for the token.

“When the world’s largest asset manager makes a move like this, other issuers are going to take notice because the stakes are so high in the Bitcoin ETF race,” Nate Geraci, president of advisory firm The ETF Store. “There has been absolutely no indication that the SEC is ready to entertain a spot Bitcoin ETF. The likely assumption is that BlackRock may know something.”

BlackRock declined to comment on the speculation Wednesday. At the time of the filing, a spokeswoman cited regulatory restrictions.

In addition to the rally in Bitcoin, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (ticker GBTC)’s discount to its net-asset value has narrowed.

Industry proponents such as Gemini Trust Co.’s Cameron Winklevoss have been quick to cite the rebound to champion the digital currency after what’s been a rough spate that included scandals, bankruptcies and regulatory actions.

The Great Accumulation of bitcoin has begun. Anyone watching the flurry of ETF filings understands the window to purchase pre-IPO bitcoin before ETFs go live and open the floodgates is closing fast. If bitcoin was the most obvious and best investment of the previous decade, this…

— Cameron Winklevoss (@cameron) June 21, 2023

The renewed push for a spot Bitcoin ETF follows a long line of rejections. There have been about 30 attempts for such a product, according to a tally from Bloomberg Intelligence. Now, with BlackRock throwing its hat into the ring, there’s likely more to come, in the eyes of Dabner Capital Partners’ Dave Abner.

“Everyone who had a filing is going to resubmit and those who had been considering will also want to be filing soon as well,” said Abner, principal at Dabner Capital Partners, an ETF and crypto advisory firm.

Updated: 6-21-2023

Bitcoin Bonanza On Tap If BlackRock ETF Is Approved

Grayscale owners could see a double benefit, and Coinbase would get a shot in the arm.

The world’s largest asset manager could be a lifeline for crypto and spark a windfall for some traders.

Betting that BlackRock’s filing for an exchange-traded bitcoin fund gets approved might be foolhardy given the black box of regulators’ thinking, but a nod would have an electric effect on the besieged asset class if it were to happen.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has so far rejected a number of applications for ETFs that would own bitcoin. It even recently went to court to defend itself in litigation brought by Grayscale Investments, which runs a $17.5 billion tradable bitcoin fund and has been seeking to convert it to an ETF.

Since it isn’t one, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, or GBTC, has traded at an increasingly wide discount to the value of bitcoin it holds—around 40% on average this year. Conversion would close that gap by enabling traders to arbitrage it away, unlocking billions in value.

The discount on GBTC already has narrowed since BlackRock’s filing, from around 44% in the middle of last week to around 34% as of Tuesday. That is a sign that investors believe ETF conversion is more likely. A prior applicant, Bitwise Asset Management, also sought fresh permission to list a spot bitcoin ETF late last week.

Changing the SEC’s mind won’t be easy, yet there are reasons to think it is possible. At first blush, BlackRock’s proposal is broadly similar to others before it, creating a trust that will own bitcoin and that can create and redeem shares in exchange for bitcoin. These bitcoin ETF proposals have been broadly similar to how an ETF for a physical commodity such as gold works.

But BlackRock’s application has at least one notable addition—an expected agreement to share “surveillance” of a spot bitcoin-trading platform with Nasdaq, which would list the ETF, according to a regulatory filing. In other words, the exchange could get confidential information on buyers, sellers and prices.

Potential manipulation of the price of spot bitcoin is a big reason why the SEC has rejected bitcoin ETF applications so far. If that surveillance-sharing platform were Coinbase Global, it may be significant because Coinbase is among the exchanges whose prices inform the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate, which is what would be used by BlackRock’s ETF.

Listing applications for ETFs have all argued that the bitcoin spot market already has surveillance abilities in the form of CME Group and its bitcoin futures.

The SEC has approved ETFs that own bitcoin futures. But the SEC has argued that, even if the prices on bitcoin spot and futures markets are very closely correlated, the agency doesn’t have sufficient evidence that attempts to manipulate trading in the spot market would be detectable in the futures market.

Whether that argument is compelling is likely being considered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The fact that the case has made it that far alone might be a signal to players such as BlackRock that there is a decent chance that the tide may turn.

Even beyond the court, could the new surveillance arrangement be enough to convince the SEC to make a different decision on this application?

Perhaps it gets around the futures-versus-spot issue, though whether the regulator would deem the market participating in surveillance “of significant size,” or a sufficiently “regulated market,” remain open questions.

One thing that is tougher to envision is the SEC approving one spot bitcoin ETF but denying another. If surveillance were the turning point, other ETFs could adopt the same mechanism. And once an exchange successfully applies to list a spot bitcoin ETF, the process typically becomes simpler for others.

If Grayscale were approved, even if it doesn’t go first, it might forfeit some market share but benefit from its head start. More immediately, though, GBTC holders would benefit from the closing of the discount. A wider ownership base might also generally boost the price of bitcoin.

Another winner, in any scenario, might be Coinbase. On the one hand, an easily tradable spot ETF could take some market share among individual investors who might otherwise sign up to trade crypto on its platform.

On the other hand, Coinbase is also the bitcoin custodian for BlackRock’s proposed trust and for Grayscale’s trust, and earns fees for doing so—a steadier revenue source than transaction volume-based fees. Coinbase’s institutional business is also poised to be a hub for market-makers that make trades around spot ETFs.

Crypto may be in the midst of its trickiest regulatory period yet. Who the players are on the other side might end up being significantly different.

Big Firms Want Normal Crypto Markets

Institutional Crypto

I think even a year ago it was possible to imagine the traditional financial system learning something from crypto. Crypto built its own financial system that does things differently from traditional finance. For Instance:

* Crypto exchanges have websites and are open to everyone. If you want to buy Bitcoin, you don’t have to go to a brokerage firm to send your order to the crypto exchange: You just go to the exchange yourself, deposit some money there, and put in a buy order. Crypto cut out layers of middlemen and let everyone trade on the same exchanges.

There was something egalitarian about this; everyone traded on a level playing field, instead of the US stock market’s system of retail brokers routing their customers’ orders to wholesalers who pay for order flow.

* Crypto exchanges also run their own clearinghouses, keeping custody of assets and settling trades, and they use real-time, objective, automated margining systems rather than the traditional fuzzy margining of traditional finance. FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, was a big proponent of this, and we talked about its proposal last year.

I thought it was cool! Traditional finance involves a lot of unsecured credit risk, while crypto was building a system that was much more based on real-time collateral; Bankman-Fried argued, rather compellingly, that the crypto approach might be safer.

* We have talked a lot about “tokenomics,” the idea of giving people who use a system (say, a crypto exchange) some financial stake in the system (say, a token that gives them a share of the exchange’s fee income).

This has some securities-law problems, and some Ponzi-ish elements, and some wrong-way risk, but it also has a real appeal: It is a way to build network businesses from a cold start, a clever way to solve a business problem

* Blockchain blockchain blockchain. I have never really understood why keeping track of stock ownership (or real estate, etc.) on a blockchain was better than keeping track of it in a centralized database run by a trusted intermediary, but people sure talked about it a lot.

And, you know, I guess it is still possible to imagine traditional finance adopting these (or other) ideas from crypto. It is harder though.

A year ago it seemed like FTX’s plan was to expand out from crypto, to prove that its approach was better than that of traditional exchanges, to take over the trading of stocks and commodities and whatever, to bring the structure of crypto finance to the assets of traditional finance.

Not anymore, man! The odds of a crypto exchange taking a lot of market share in US stock trading anytime soon are really, really low.

All Of Those Lessons From Crypto Seem Bad Now:

* Having crypto exchanges hold customer money, instead of keeping it at brokerages, seems bad after FTX (and a long line of previous crypto exchanges) misplaced the customers’ money.

* Same with FTX’s margining system, which turned out to just give all of FTX’s customer money to its affiliated trading firm.

* The problem with tokenomics is that the US Securities and Exchange Commission thinks, correctly, that all of these tokens that convey a financial stake in the system are securities, and so have to be registered with the SEC, which is very hard for crypto platforms to do. All of these tokens seem to be illegal, or at least legally very dicey, in the US.

* Everyone stopped talking about blockchain, and stock exchanges that excitedly announced their blockchain plans in 2017 have quietly dropped them.

Meanwhile traditional finance is like “ugh, fine, we’ll do crypto, but in a normal way.” Bloomberg News checks in on EDX markets, which is as traditional as can be except it trades Bitcoin:

* A new crypto exchange backed by firms including Citadel Securities, Fidelity Digital Assets and Charles Schwab Corp. said it’s gone live, a move that could reshape the digital-asset landscape amid heightened US scrutiny of the sector.

* EDX Markets, an institutional-only exchange announced in September 2022, will offer trading in four cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. Unlike existing crypto platforms such as Coinbase Global Inc. and Binance Holdings Ltd., it offers a “non-custodial” model, meaning that it doesn’t hold clients’ digital assets during trading. Instead, EDX is working with a third-party custodian, according to Chief Executive Officer Jamil Nazarali. …

* “We believe crypto is here to stay, but for it to evolve as an asset class it needs to adopt the rules and investor protections that exist in traditional finance,” Nazarali said in an interview. “The message we’ve got from our investors is that this creates an even bigger space for us.”

The Wall Street Journal Adds:

* EDX says its approach draws on standard practices in traditional, regulated financial markets and differs in key ways from how crypto exchanges typically operate.

* One major difference: EDX is a “noncustodial” exchange, meaning it doesn’t directly handle its customers’ digital assets. Instead, EDX runs a marketplace where firms agree to execute trades of coins and dollars, using its platform to agree on prices.

Then the firms move crypto and cash between each other to settle the trades. Later this year, EDX plans to launch a clearinghouse to facilitate the process of settling trades, but even then it plans to use third-party banks and a crypto custodian to hold customer assets. …

* Unlike most crypto exchanges, EDX won’t directly serve individual investors. Instead, it expects that retail brokerages will send investors’ orders to buy and sell digital coins to its marketplace.

* The stock market operates under a similar model, in which investors don’t directly access the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq, but instead submit orders through brokerages such as Fidelity and Schwab. …

An institutional-only exchange in which retail orders are intermediated by brokers, 1 clearing and custody that are separate from the exchange, listing only non-security tokens, no hype about blockchain. This is a way to trade crypto while almost completely rejecting the crypto financial system.

This is bringing the structure of traditional finance to the assets of crypto finance. Traditional finance learned nothing from the crypto financial system except that it didn’t work. Which is a useful lesson.

Elsewhere at the Journal, Telis Demos writes about BlackRock Inc.’s proposed Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, which we discussed the other day, and which seems to be good for Bitcoin prices. He writes:

* BlackRock’s application has at least one notable addition—an expected agreement to share “surveillance” of a spot bitcoin-trading platform with Nasdaq, which would list the ETF, according to a regulatory filing. In other words, the exchange could get confidential information on buyers, sellers and prices.

Nobody quite trusts crypto exchanges to catch market manipulation, so they’ll ask Nasdaq to look for market manipulation on the crypto exchanges.

Updated: 6-22-2023

The Great Accumulation’ Of Bitcoin Has Begun, Says Gemini’s Winklevoss

With spot Bitcoin ETFs filings helping boost the price of Bitcoin, some suggest the “window to front-run institutional demand is closing.”

Recently renewed optimism for an approved Bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) is igniting “The Great Accumulation Race” for Bitcoin, according to industry pundits.

Over the past week, Fidelity, Invesco, Wisdom Tree and Valkyrie have followed investment giant BlackRock in applying for a Bitcoin spot ETF with the United States Securities Exchange Commission, which some analysts believe is the reason for Bitcoin’s 19% price surge to $30,240 since June 16.

5 Bitcoin ETF applications in 5 days!
– Blackrock
– Fidelity
– Invesco
– Wisdom Tree
– Valkyrie

— Lark Davis (@TheCryptoLark) June 21, 2023

Cameron Winklevoss, the co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, stated on June 21 that he believes “The Great Accumulation” of Bitcoin has begun between institutions and retail investors.

He suggested that buying Bitcoin prior to the ETFs hitting the public market is akin to that of a pre-Initial Public Offering purchase and suggested that the “floodgates” for buying Bitcoin are “closing fast.”

The Great Accumulation of bitcoin has begun. Anyone watching the flurry of ETF filings understands the window to purchase pre-IPO bitcoin before ETFs go live and open the floodgates is closing fast. If bitcoin was the most obvious and best investment of the previous decade, this…

— Cameron Winklevoss (@cameron) June 21, 2023

MicroStrategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor weighed in on the subject in his own post, suggesting that retail investors may soon be pushed aside by increasing institutional demand:

“The window to front-run institutional demand for Bitcoin is closing.”

Bitcoin is currently trading hands for $30,240, while the Crypto Fear and Greed index has skyrocketed from 49 (Neutral) to 65 (Greed) in just the last two days.

In a June 21 interview with CNBC, Bitcoin investor Anthony Pompliano said he expects a tug-of-war to play out between retail investors and Wall Street:

“We have institutions and individuals scrambling to try to get their share of the 21 million Bitcoin that will ever be in existence. The retail investor for 15 years now has a head start and has accumulated all the Bitcoin that’s been mined and put into circulation, but 68% of that hasn’t moved in a year.”

“People forget that bitcoin went from $0 to nearly $1 trillion market cap with almost no institutional participation,” Pompliano said in a June 21 tweet.

So when “Wall Street and BlackRock show up to the market,” Pompliano expects Bitcoin to become “highly illiquid” because retailers “don’t want to sell to Wall Street,” he added during the CNBC interview.

BlackRock shows up and bitcoin is up 20% for the week.

People forget that bitcoin went from $0 to nearly $1 trillion market cap with almost no institutional participation.

If retail investors were good for $1T, what do you think happens when the deep pockets come play?

— Pomp (@APompliano) June 21, 2023

Meanwhile, Dylan LeClair, a Bitcoin analyst and founder of 21st Paradigm, explained that Bitcoin’s price is now “extremely inelastic” — “more so than ever” — amid the recent ETF filings, which are serving as a “catalyst” for large amounts of new flows into the market.

However, LeClair predicts that no ETF application will be approved by the SEC until January or February 2024 at the earliest.

Bitcoin’s supply is extremely inelastic, more so than ever currently.

A spot ETF is obviously a catalyst for a large amount of new flows to come into the market, which not only has changed the narrative but has prompted others to front run said future flows.

TLDR: Send it. pic.twitter.com/Jd8Gm8o3Mx

— Dylan LeClair (@DylanLeClair_) June 21, 2023

Updated: 6-22-2023

BlackRock Announces Job Cuts Along With Other Wall Street Traders

BlackRock Inc. said it is cutting staff after shifting its budget to support critical priorities in a move that will affect less than 1% of staff, the firm said Thursday.

In a memo to staff, Chief Operating Officer Rob Goldstein and Global Head of Human Resources Caroline Heller said the decision followed a recent business review.

“Even with these changes, our headcount will be higher at the end of the year compared to the start of the year as we continue to invest in our talent and our business,” they wrote.

BlackRock had approximately 19,800 employees at the end of last year. The firm said in January that it would dismiss 500 employees, or roughly 2.5% of its global workforce, in its first pullback since 2019.

Last month, Wellington Management cut about 5% of its staff, as the industry adjusted to volatile markets and grappled with inflation and rising interest rates.

Updated: 6-26-2023

Cathie Wood’s ARK Says It’s First In Line For Spot-Bitcoin ETF

* ARK and 21Shares Had In April Re-Filed App For A Spot Product

* Cryptocurrencies Have Risen Since BlackRock’s spot-ETF Filing

Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment Management says it’s first in line to get potential approval for a spot-Bitcoin ETF, despite industry reasoning positing that BlackRock Inc. might be ahead in the race should any product receive regulatory assent.

BlackRock, whose shock filing for a spot product has rocked crypto markets, might be distinguishing its application with the appendage of a “unique” exchange surveillance-sharing agreement that would look to prevent market manipulation, but “other applicants will be able to amend their filings with similar agreements at little cost,” wrote ARK Investment Management analyst Yassine Elmandjra.

In fact, in April, “ARK and 21Shares filed an application with the SEC for a Bitcoin ETF that now is the only one ahead of BlackRock’s,” Elmandjra said.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, earlier this month applied for the iShares Bitcoin Trust, for which Coinbase Global Inc., the biggest crypto exchange in the US, would act as custodian. The filing made a splash in crypto markets thanks to the asset-manager’s stature on Wall Street and elsewhere.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have all rallied since.

Meanwhile, when 21Shares, a crypto exchange-traded-products issuer, and ARK refiled in April, they argued that a spot product would offer US investors protections that currently don’t exist.

“21Shares, ARK and Cboe are first in line because their next SEC decision date is 8/13/23 and we don’t yet have a date for the other 19b-4 applications like the one from BlackRock,” said Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst James Seyffart.

“I would assume Cboe is looking to update their 19b-4 rule change proposal to add a surveillance-sharing agreement with Coinbase if they believe it could be a path to an ETF approval.”

A BlackRock spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on ARK’s assertions. A Cboe representative also didn’t immediately reply.

To be sure, a spot-Bitcoin exchange-traded fund does not currently exist in the US and regulators have, in the past, been loath to green-light one.

In prior instances, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has cited market manipulation, among other reasons, when rejecting such proposals.

And this isn’t the first hype-cycle over a potential launch. Crypto fans, who have been yearning for a spot-Bitcoin ETF for years, have been through periods of excitement before, only for regulators to ultimately rebuff all attempts.

Digital Asset Inflows Highest In A Year After BlackRock’s Spot-Bitcoin ETF Filing

* Crypto-Based Products Saw $199 Million In Inflows Last Week

* Rush of ETF Filings Is Renewing Insitutional Investor Interest

Digital-asset investment products added $199 million last week, the biggest weekly inflows in nearly a year, as a flurry of applications for spot-Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the US sparks renewed interest in the space.

The inflows are the highest since July 2022 and follow nine consecutive weeks of outflows, according to a report from digital asset manager and crypto research firm CoinShares.

About $187 million, or 94% of the total flows, went to Bitcoin. Total assets under management now stand at $37 billion — the highest since before the collapse of Three Arrows Capital, the data shows.

“We believe this renewed positive sentiment is due to recent announcements from high profile ETP issuers that have filed for physically backed ETFs,” CoinShares wrote in the Monday report.

On June 15, BlackRock Inc. — the world’s largest asset manager — filed for a US spot Bitcoin ETF. Similar applications, including from Invesco Ltd. and WisdomTree, followed soon after.

BlackRock’s filing is seen by several crypto market commentators as a sign that the US Securities and Exchange Commission may finally approve a physically-backed Bitcoin ETF.

The regulator has repeatedly rejected such a structure, citing fraud and manipulation risks in the spot market for Bitcoin.

There have been about 30 attempts for a spot-Bitcoin product, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence tally, including an application filed jointly by Cathie Wood’s ARK and 21 Shares.

ARK Investment Management crypto analyst Yassine Elmandjra wrote in a note that the joint application was the “only one ahead of Blackrock’s.”

Meanwhile, the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF — the US’s first Bitcoin futures ETF when it debuted in 2021 — saw its highest weekly inflows in about a year.

“While BITO benefited from the spot filings, if approved, they’ll likely take business from the ETF,” wrote Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, in a note Monday.

Bitcoin hit its highest level in a year last Friday, and is up more than 80% in 2023.

Updated: 6-30-2023

SEC Says Spot Bitcoin ETF Filings Are Inadequate

Regulator tells Nasdaq, Cboe that applications from BlackRock, Fidelity and others aren’t clear and comprehensive.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said a recent wave of applications filed by asset managers to launch spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds are inadequate, according to people familiar with the matter.

The agency informed exchanges Nasdaq and Cboe CBOE Global Markets, which filed the applications on behalf of asset managers including BlackRock and Fidelity Investments, that they aren’t sufficiently clear and comprehensive, the people said. The exchanges or asset managers can update them to address the regulator’s feedback and refile.

Prices of bitcoin and crypto-related stocks have surged since mid-June when BlackRock unveiled plans for an ETF that holds actual bitcoin. The cryptocurrency has climbed about 20%, rising above $30,000 for the first time since April. Shares of Coinbase Global, which is listed as the custodian for the BlackRock fund’s holdings, have soared more than 30% over the same period.

Bitcoin’s dollar value fell 5% after The Wall Street Journal first reported the SEC’s decision, before rebounding slightly.

A wave of traditional and crypto asset managers followed in BlackRock’s footsteps. Fidelity Investments, Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management, Invesco, WisdomTree, Bitwise Asset Management and Valkyrie all reactivated or amended their applications for a spot bitcoin ETF in recent days.

An ETF that tracks the actual price of bitcoin would mark a watershed moment for the industry because it would provide wider access to the cryptocurrency. It would allow investors to buy and sell bitcoin through a brokerage account as easily as shares of stock.

The SEC has repeatedly rejected such funds going back to 2017 on the grounds that they are vulnerable to fraud and market manipulation. At least half a dozen ETFs that own bitcoin futures are already on the market.

Investors and analysts viewed the bid by BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, as the best hope yet for a spot bitcoin ETF, partly because of its near-perfect record seeing applications through.

Some industry watchers predicted that BlackRock’s filing would appease the SEC’s concerns through an agreement to share “surveillance” of a spot bitcoin-trading platform with Nasdaq, which would list the ETF.

Fidelity and Ark also included similar language about a “surveillance-sharing agreement” with the Cboe, which would list their ETFs.

Yet the SEC told the exchanges that it returned the filings because they didn’t name the spot bitcoin exchange with which they are expected to have a “surveillance-sharing agreement” or provide enough information about the details of those surveillance arrangements.

A Cboe spokeswoman said it plans to update its applications and refile. Representatives for the SEC, Nasdaq, BlackRock, Fidelity, Invesco, WisdomTree and Ark declined to comment.

Refiling the applications would reset the clock and set asset managers back at least seven days in the competitive race to launch the first spot bitcoin ETF.

After an exchange or asset manager resubmits an application, the SEC has 15 days to put the filing out for public commentary, during which it can return the filing to them again by the seventh day. After the 15-day period ends, the SEC has up to 240 days to either approve or reject the filing.

The agency is also locked in a legal battle with Grayscale Investments. The crypto-asset manager sued the SEC in June 2022 after it rejected its bid to convert the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust into a spot bitcoin offering. Grayscale has said it expects a verdict in the fall, though a ruling could come sooner.

Some analysts say Binance’s dominance in the market for spot and futures trading hurts the chances of approval for a spot bitcoin ETF.

“Given the logic that the SEC has used up till now, Binance needs to go bust, and kosher venues need to take its place, before a U.S. bitcoin ETF gets approved, because it’s only then that a majority of bitcoin trading will migrate to venues that tick both the SEC’s ‘regulated’ and ‘significant’ requirements,” John Paul Koning, a financial writer, said in a recent blog post.

The SEC sued Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, in early June alleging the overseas company operated an illegal trading platform in the U.S. and misused customers’ funds. A day later, it sued Coinbase saying it violated rules that require it to register as an exchange and be overseen by the federal agency.

There may be a longer wait for a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States, as the Securities and Exchange Commission labeled investment managers’ recent applications inadequate.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the securities regulator told the Nasdaq and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe) that their filings are not “sufficiently clear and comprehensive.” These exchanges represent asset managers in the filing of the financial product.

In the eyes of the SEC, the exchanges should have named the spot Bitcoin exchange with which they would have a “surveillance-sharing agreement” or provided sufficient information about the details of those surveillance arrangements. However, asset managers can resubmit the filings after clarifying the information.

A flurry of applications has been filed over the past few weeks since BlackRock joined the list of companies seeking to debut the first spot Bitcoin ETF of Wall Street.

BlackRock’s application introduced a “surveillance sharing agreement,” under which information about market trading and clearing activities are shared between entities to avoid the possibility of market manipulation.

BlackRock’s application led ARK Invest and 21Shares to amend their third application for a spot BTC ETF to include a similar surveillance agreement. Other asset managers that refiled or amended their applications in the past days include Invesco, WisdomTree, Valkyrie and Fidelity. ARK Invest, however, is reportedly a front-runner in this race.

ETFs track a specific index and are generally traded on exchanges. In the cryptocurrency market, a fund that tracks the price of one or multiple digital tokens and consists of various cryptocurrencies is called a cryptocurrency ETF.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs have been denied since 2017 by the SEC. In Canada, however, the financial product is already available. Three significant funds — Purpose Bitcoin, 3iQ CoinShares and CI Galaxy Bitcoin — are all directly invested in spot Bitcoin.

Bitcoin ‘Overreacting’ As SEC Returns ETF Filings, BTC Price Dives 6%

Bitcoin ETF applications need refiling, the SEC says, but as BTC price dips to $29,500, markets instantly fear that the fight is over.

Bitcoin fell below $30,000 after the June 30 Wall Street open as markets panicked over the fate of its first spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Bureaucratic Error May Explain Bitcoin ETF Filing Hiccup

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC price action hurtling downward, briefly reaching $29,500.

The volatility accompanied a report that United States regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission had refused applications for the first Bitcoin spot-price ETF.

Those applications had kickstarted the latest BTC price rebound, one which had taken the largest cryptocurrency to new yearly highs.

Claims by The Wall Street Journal, which cited an unidentified source, that they had now been returned, saw BTC/USD hit nine-day lows before rebounding to circle $30,000.

The original report outlined the specific circumstances of the applications’ rejection, and reacting, market observers suggested that this amounted to little more than a technicality.

The WSJ stated that “the SEC told the exchanges that it returned the filings because they didn’t name the spot bitcoin exchange with which they are expected to have a ‘surveillance-sharing agreement’ or provide enough information about the details of those surveillance arrangements.”

“Asset managers can update the language and refile,” it added.

“This could even be interpreted that the SEC are indicating to BlackRock, what they need to do, to get this across the line and approved… which is also positive,” financial commentator Tedtalksmacro argued in a more optimistic take.

Updated: 6-30-2023

Coinbase Will Be Surveillance Partner For Fidelity, Other Bitcoin ETFs, Refiled Applications Say

The SEC told Cboe it needed to name its partner earlier Friday.

Cboe’s BZX Exchange named crypto exchange Coinbase as the market for its surveillance-sharing agreement when it refiled its spot bitcoin exchange-traded (ETF) fund applications for several would-be bitcoin ETF issuers on Friday.

Fidelity, WisdomTree, VanEck, ARK Invest, Galaxy/Invesco and BlackRock all filed for spot bitcoin ETFs over the past few weeks, hoping to succeed at launching a product the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected for years. While BlackRock filed with Nasdaq, the other companies are working with Cboe.

On Friday, the SEC told some both Nasdaq and Cboe that their applications were “inadequate” because they didn’t name the market that the fund sponsors are working with on their surveillance-sharing agreements, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In its refiled applications, Cboe said Coinbase’s platform “represents a substantial portion of U.S.-based and USD denominated Bitcoin trading” as it named the U.S. crypto exchange as its partner for these surveillance-sharing agreements.

“The Spot BTC SSA [surveillance-sharing agreement] is expected to have the hallmarks of a surveillance-sharing agreement between two members of the ISG, which would give the Exchange supplemental access to data regarding spot Bitcoin trades occurring on Coinbase if the Exchange determines it is necessary as part of its surveillance program for the Commodity-Based Trust Shares in a manner similar to the way that exchanges share information as part of ISG,” the filing said.

The SEC has called for surveillance-sharing agreements with markets of “significant size” in the past, arguing that this is necessary to prevent market manipulation or other unwanted behaviors and protect consumers.

The lack of these agreements figured heavily into many of the SEC’s prior rejections of bitcoin ETF applications.

The regulator still has to formally acknowledge it is reviewing the applications. The SEC will kick off an initial 45-day review period when it publishes the filings in the Federal Register – the national logbook – but can extend this to a total of 240 days.

Complicating the SEC’s calculus may be the fact that it sued Coinbase earlier this month on allegations of operating an unregistered securities exchange, broker and clearinghouse – though the SEC is not alleging that Bitcoin itself is a security, and SEC Chair Gary Gensler has often referred to it as an example of a digital asset that is not a security.

It also remains to be seen whether the SEC will agree that Coinbase is a significant, regulated market for bitcoin.

Updated: 7-5-2023

‘Bitcoin Is An International Asset’ — BlackRock CEO’s Bullish Remarks

The CEO of the world’s largest asset management firm, Larry Fink, spoke on BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF filing and the potential benefits of crypto.

Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, has delivered pro-crypto remarks amid the asset manager applying to list a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States.

Speaking on Fox Business on July 5, Fink said the role of cryptocurrency was largely “digitizing gold,” suggesting U.S. regulators consider how an ETF directly linked to Bitcoin $30,317 could democratize finance.

During his time at BlackRock, Fink has often commented on major events affecting the crypto space, including the collapse of FTX in 2022 and rising interest in BTC.

“Let’s be clear: Bitcoin is an international asset,” said Fink. “It’s not based on any one currency, and so it can represent an asset that people can play as an alternative.”

#Bitcoin is an International Asset. – Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO pic.twitter.com/WIVKITXYPj

— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) July 5, 2023

Fink suggested that investors could turn to Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation or the devaluation of certain currencies. As CEO of the largest asset management firm in the world, with more than $9 trillion in assets under management as of April, Fink’s pro-crypto sentiment could create ripples in and out of the space.

Many crypto users on social media reacted positively to Fink’s interview, with at least one suggesting his words could cause the price of certain assets to surge in what the user called the “Fink Pump.”

At the time of publication, the BTC price was $30,473, having dropped by roughly 1% in the previous 24 hours.

Under Fink, BlackRock has attempted to launch a spot BTC ETF with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase acting as a surveillance partner.

It’s unclear if the Securities and Exchange Commission will approve the investment vehicle, given its track record of rejecting all previously filed spot BTC ETF applications to date.

Updated: 7-14-2023

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink Talks Up Crypto Demand From Gold Investors

The asset management giant last month applied with regulators to open a spot bitcoin ETF.

Larry Fink was in a bullish mood on Friday as he spoke of the increasing demand he is seeing for cryptocurrencies among gold investors.

Appearing on CNBC following his company’s second-quarter earnings report, the CEO of $8.5 trillion asset manager BlackRock (BLK) said “more and more” gold investors have been asking about the role of crypto over the last five years, highlighting the role exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have had in democratizing access to gold, as they could do in crypto.

“If you look at the value of our dollar, how it depreciated in the last two months and how much it appreciated over the last five years … an international crypto product can really transcend that,” he said. “That’s why we believe there’s great opportunities and that’s why we’re seeing more and more interest. And the interest is broad-based [and] worldwide.”

BlackRock filed an application to list a spot bitcoin ETF last month with a surveillance-sharing agreement worked in, which could prove to be the deciding factor in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) finally approving such a product after rejecting dozens of applications in recent years.

“As with any new markets, if BlackRock’s name’s going to be on it, we’re going to make sure it’s safe and sound and protected,” Fink added.

Updated: 10-13-2023

BlackRock Signals M&A Hunger After Sharp Drop In Inflows

A sharp drop in net inflows took shares of BlackRock down around 1% on Friday despite the company handily beating third-quarter profit estimates, as the world’s largest asset manager signaled that it was increasing its hunt for acquisition targets.

A rise in investment advisory fees and BlackRock’s assets under management (AUM) helped the company’s adjusted profit of $10.91 per share breeze past analysts’ estimates of $8.26, according to LSEG data.

However, its net inflows for the quarter fell to $2.57 billion from $16.9 billion last year, reflecting $49 billion of net outflows from lower-fee institutional index equity strategies, including $19 billion from a single international client.

BlackRock ended the third quarter with $9.10 trillion in assets under management (AUM), up from $7.96 trillion a year earlier, but lower than $9.4 trillion in the second quarter this year.

“For the first time in nearly two decades, clients are earning a real return in cash and can wait for more policy and market certainty before re-risking. This dynamic weighed on the industry and BlackRock’s third-quarter flows,” CEO Larry Fink said in a statement.

BlackRock, whose spending on mergers and acquisitions has been below its norms over the last five years, is engaged in more deal talks than it has been in “many, many years,” Fink told analysts on the company’s earnings call.

A significant acquisition would follow the company’s track record of purchasing new assets to increase growth during periods of market weakness, said Kyle Sanders, an analyst at Edward Jones.

“They seem to be inching for a big deal, and Larry is probably hunting for elephants right now,” he said.

Shares of BlackRock are down nearly 12% for the year to date, well below the 13.2% gain in the benchmark S&P 500 over the same time.

Hopes that the Federal Reserve could soon be done with its monetary tightening have helped calm investor worries about a potential recession, yet signals from the central bank that it will keep its benchmark interest rate higher for longer have weighed on bond prices, pushing yields near 16-year highs.

The firm’s results “underscore continued pressure on industry organic growth that may last longer than currently reflected in investors’ expectations amid higher-for-longer short-term rates,” analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote in a report Friday.

They reiterated Goldman’s buy rating on the stock and its 12-month target price of $726. “While we are encouraged by the firm’s sharper focus on expenses, we expect (BlackRock’s) near-term organic base fee growth to remain muted.”

Investors are likely waiting for yields to peak before making any significant changes in their asset allocation, BlackRock said.

“The long-term trend of clients consolidating more of their portfolios with BlackRock is only accelerating, and underlying business momentum remains strong,” Fink said.

Fink, who said at the company’s investor day in June that he has no plans to retire, did not give any update on the company’s succession plans.

“I’m sticking around, I have more energy,” he said in an interview on CNBC.

Questions over the length of Fink’s tenure and eventual successor will likely become a more important issue for investors as the company expands its offerings in technology services, said Cathy Seifert, an analyst at CFRA.

“I think the firm is at an inflection point, and it will be interesting to see how they grow over the next 12 to 18 months,” she said.

Revenue at BlackRock rose nearly 5% to $4.52 billion from a year earlier, driven by organic growth and the impact of market movements over the past 12 months on average AUM and higher technology services revenue, it said.

The New York-based company’s chief source of revenue is the management fees it earns as a percentage of the total AUM.

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Blockstream’s Samson Mow: Bitcoin’s Block Size Already ‘Too Big’

Attorneys Seek Bank Of Ireland Execs’ Testimony Against OneCoin Scammer (#GotBitcoin?)

OpenLibra Plans To Launch Permissionless Fork Of Facebook’s Stablecoin (#GotBitcoin?)

Tiny $217 Options Trade On Bitcoin Blockchain Could Be Wall Street’s Death Knell (#GotBitcoin?)

Class Action Accuses Tether And Bitfinex Of Market Manipulation (#GotBitcoin?)

Sharia Goldbugs: How ISIS Created A Currency For World Domination (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Eyes Demand As Hong Kong Protestors Announce Bank Run (#GotBitcoin?)

How To Securely Transfer Crypto To Your Heirs

‘Gold-Backed’ Crypto Token Promoter Karatbars Investigated By Florida Regulators (#GotBitcoin?)

Crypto News From The Spanish-Speaking World (#GotBitcoin?)

Financial Services Giant Morningstar To Offer Ratings For Crypto Assets (#GotBitcoin?)

‘Gold-Backed’ Crypto Token Promoter Karatbars Investigated By Florida Regulators (#GotBitcoin?)

The Original Sins Of Cryptocurrencies (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Is The Fraud? JPMorgan Metals Desk Fixed Gold Prices For Years (#GotBitcoin?)

Israeli Startup That Allows Offline Crypto Transactions Secures $4M (#GotBitcoin?)

[PSA] Non-genuine Trezor One Devices Spotted (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Stronger Than Ever But No One Seems To Care: Google Trends (#GotBitcoin?)

First-Ever SEC-Qualified Token Offering In US Raises $23 Million (#GotBitcoin?)

You Can Now Prove A Whole Blockchain With One Math Problem – Really

Crypto Mining Supply Fails To Meet Market Demand In Q2: TokenInsight

$2 Billion Lost In Mt. Gox Bitcoin Hack Can Be Recovered, Lawyer Claims (#GotBitcoin?)

Fed Chair Says Agency Monitoring Crypto But Not Developing Its Own (#GotBitcoin?)

Wesley Snipes Is Launching A Tokenized $25 Million Movie Fund (#GotBitcoin?)

Mystery 94K BTC Transaction Becomes Richest Non-Exchange Address (#GotBitcoin?)

A Crypto Fix For A Broken International Monetary System (#GotBitcoin?)

Four Out Of Five Top Bitcoin QR Code Generators Are Scams: Report (#GotBitcoin?)

Waves Platform And The Abyss To Jointly Launch Blockchain-Based Games Marketplace (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitmain Ramps Up Power And Efficiency With New Bitcoin Mining Machine (#GotBitcoin?)

Ledger Live Now Supports Over 1,250 Ethereum-Based ERC-20 Tokens (#GotBitcoin?)

Miss Finland: Bitcoin’s Risk Keeps Most Women Away From Cryptocurrency (#GotBitcoin?)

Artist Akon Loves BTC And Says, “It’s Controlled By The People” (#GotBitcoin?)

Ledger Live Now Supports Over 1,250 Ethereum-Based ERC-20 Tokens (#GotBitcoin?)

Co-Founder Of LinkedIn Presents Crypto Rap Video: Hamilton Vs. Satoshi (#GotBitcoin?)

Crypto Insurance Market To Grow, Lloyd’s Of London And Aon To Lead (#GotBitcoin?)

No ‘AltSeason’ Until Bitcoin Breaks $20K, Says Hedge Fund Manager (#GotBitcoin?)

NSA Working To Develop Quantum-Resistant Cryptocurrency: Report (#GotBitcoin?)

Custody Provider Legacy Trust Launches Crypto Pension Plan (#GotBitcoin?)

Vaneck, SolidX To Offer Limited Bitcoin ETF For Institutions Via Exemption (#GotBitcoin?)

Russell Okung: From NFL Superstar To Bitcoin Educator In 2 Years (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Miners Made $14 Billion To Date Securing The Network (#GotBitcoin?)

Why Does Amazon Want To Hire Blockchain Experts For Its Ads Division?

Argentina’s Economy Is In A Technical Default (#GotBitcoin?)

Blockchain-Based Fractional Ownership Used To Sell High-End Art (#GotBitcoin?)

Portugal Tax Authority: Bitcoin Trading And Payments Are Tax-Free (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin ‘Failed Safe Haven Test’ After 7% Drop, Peter Schiff Gloats (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Dev Reveals Multisig UI Teaser For Hardware Wallets, Full Nodes (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Price: $10K Holds For Now As 50% Of CME Futures Set To Expire (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Realized Market Cap Hits $100 Billion For The First Time (#GotBitcoin?)

Stablecoins Begin To Look Beyond The Dollar (#GotBitcoin?)

Bank Of England Governor: Libra-Like Currency Could Replace US Dollar (#GotBitcoin?)

Binance Reveals ‘Venus’ — Its Own Project To Rival Facebook’s Libra (#GotBitcoin?)

The Real Benefits Of Blockchain Are Here. They’re Being Ignored (#GotBitcoin?)

CommBank Develops Blockchain Market To Boost Biodiversity (#GotBitcoin?)

SEC Approves Blockchain Tech Startup Securitize To Record Stock Transfers (#GotBitcoin?)

SegWit Creator Introduces New Language For Bitcoin Smart Contracts (#GotBitcoin?)

You Can Now Earn Bitcoin Rewards For Postmates Purchases (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Price ‘Will Struggle’ In Big Financial Crisis, Says Investor (#GotBitcoin?)

Fidelity Charitable Received Over $100M In Crypto Donations Since 2015 (#GotBitcoin?)

Would Blockchain Better Protect User Data Than FaceApp? Experts Answer (#GotBitcoin?)

Just The Existence Of Bitcoin Impacts Monetary Policy (#GotBitcoin?)

What Are The Biggest Alleged Crypto Heists And How Much Was Stolen? (#GotBitcoin?)

IRS To Cryptocurrency Owners: Come Clean, Or Else!

Coinbase Accidentally Saves Unencrypted Passwords Of 3,420 Customers (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Is A ‘Chaos Hedge, Or Schmuck Insurance‘ (#GotBitcoin?)

Bakkt Announces September 23 Launch Of Futures And Custody

Coinbase CEO: Institutions Depositing $200-400M Into Crypto Per Week (#GotBitcoin?)

Researchers Find Monero Mining Malware That Hides From Task Manager (#GotBitcoin?)

Crypto Dusting Attack Affects Nearly 300,000 Addresses (#GotBitcoin?)

A Case For Bitcoin As Recession Hedge In A Diversified Investment Portfolio (#GotBitcoin?)

SEC Guidance Gives Ammo To Lawsuit Claiming XRP Is Unregistered Security (#GotBitcoin?)

15 Countries To Develop Crypto Transaction Tracking System: Report (#GotBitcoin?)

US Department Of Commerce Offering 6-Figure Salary To Crypto Expert (#GotBitcoin?)

Mastercard Is Building A Team To Develop Crypto, Wallet Projects (#GotBitcoin?)

Canadian Bitcoin Educator Scams The Scammer And Donates Proceeds (#GotBitcoin?)

Amazon Wants To Build A Blockchain For Ads, New Job Listing Shows (#GotBitcoin?)

Shield Bitcoin Wallets From Theft Via Time Delay (#GotBitcoin?)

Blockstream Launches Bitcoin Mining Farm With Fidelity As Early Customer (#GotBitcoin?)

Commerzbank Tests Blockchain Machine To Machine Payments With Daimler (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin’s Historical Returns Look Very Attractive As Online Banks Lower Payouts On Savings Accounts (#GotBitcoin?)

Man Takes Bitcoin Miner Seller To Tribunal Over Electricity Bill And Wins (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin’s Computing Power Sets Record As Over 100K New Miners Go Online (#GotBitcoin?)

Walmart Coin And Libra Perform Major Public Relations For Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)

Judge Says Buying Bitcoin Via Credit Card Not Necessarily A Cash Advance (#GotBitcoin?)

Poll: If You’re A Stockowner Or Crypto-Currency Holder. What Will You Do When The Recession Comes?

1 In 5 Crypto Holders Are Women, New Report Reveals (#GotBitcoin?)

Beating Bakkt, Ledgerx Is First To Launch ‘Physical’ Bitcoin Futures In Us (#GotBitcoin?)

Facebook Warns Investors That Libra Stablecoin May Never Launch (#GotBitcoin?)

Government Money Printing Is ‘Rocket Fuel’ For Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin-Friendly Square Cash App Stock Price Up 56% In 2019 (#GotBitcoin?)

Safeway Shoppers Can Now Get Bitcoin Back As Change At 894 US Stores (#GotBitcoin?)

TD Ameritrade CEO: There’s ‘Heightened Interest Again’ With Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)

Venezuela Sets New Bitcoin Volume Record Thanks To 10,000,000% Inflation (#GotBitcoin?)

Newegg Adds Bitcoin Payment Option To 73 More Countries (#GotBitcoin?)

China’s Schizophrenic Relationship With Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)

More Companies Build Products Around Crypto Hardware Wallets (#GotBitcoin?)

Bakkt Is Scheduled To Start Testing Its Bitcoin Futures Contracts Today (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Network Now 8 Times More Powerful Than It Was At $20K Price (#GotBitcoin?)

Crypto Exchange BitMEX Under Investigation By CFTC: Bloomberg (#GotBitcoin?)

“Bitcoin An ‘Unstoppable Force,” Says US Congressman At Crypto Hearing (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Network Is Moving $3 Billion Daily, Up 210% Since April (#GotBitcoin?)

Cryptocurrency Startups Get Partial Green Light From Washington

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee: Bitcoin Pullback Is Healthy, Fewer Searches Аre Good (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Lightning Nodes Are Snatching Funds From Bad Actors (#GotBitcoin?)

The Provident Bank Now Offers Deposit Services For Crypto-Related Entities (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Could Help Stop News Censorship From Space (#GotBitcoin?)

US Sanctions On Iran Crypto Mining — Inevitable Or Impossible? (#GotBitcoin?)

US Lawmaker Reintroduces ‘Safe Harbor’ Crypto Tax Bill In Congress (#GotBitcoin?)

EU Central Bank Won’t Add Bitcoin To Reserves — Says It’s Not A Currency (#GotBitcoin?)

The Miami Dolphins Now Accept Bitcoin And Litecoin Crypt-Currency Payments (#GotBitcoin?)

Trump Bashes Bitcoin And Alt-Right Is Mad As Hell (#GotBitcoin?)

Goldman Sachs Ramps Up Development Of New Secret Crypto Project (#GotBitcoin?)

Blockchain And AI Bond, Explained (#GotBitcoin?)

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust Outperformed Indexes In First Half Of 2019 (#GotBitcoin?)

XRP Is The Worst Performing Major Crypto Of 2019 (GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Back Near $12K As BTC Shorters Lose $44 Million In One Morning (#GotBitcoin?)

As Deutsche Bank Axes 18K Jobs, Bitcoin Offers A ‘Plan ฿”: VanEck Exec (#GotBitcoin?)

Argentina Drives Global LocalBitcoins Volume To Highest Since November (#GotBitcoin?)

‘I Would Buy’ Bitcoin If Growth Continues — Investment Legend Mobius (#GotBitcoin?)

Lawmakers Push For New Bitcoin Rules (#GotBitcoin?)

Facebook’s Libra Is Bad For African Americans (#GotBitcoin?)

Crypto Firm Charity Announces Alliance To Support Feminine Health (#GotBitcoin?)

Canadian Startup Wants To Upgrade Millions Of ATMs To Sell Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)

Trump Says US ‘Should Match’ China’s Money Printing Game (#GotBitcoin?)

Casa Launches Lightning Node Mobile App For Bitcoin Newbies (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Rally Fuels Market In Crypto Derivatives (#GotBitcoin?)

World’s First Zero-Fiat ‘Bitcoin Bond’ Now Available On Bloomberg Terminal (#GotBitcoin?)

Buying Bitcoin Has Been Profitable 98.2% Of The Days Since Creation (#GotBitcoin?)

Another Crypto Exchange Receives License For Crypto Futures

From ‘Ponzi’ To ‘We’re Working On It’ — BIS Chief Reverses Stance On Crypto (#GotBitcoin?)

These Are The Cities Googling ‘Bitcoin’ As Interest Hits 17-Month High (#GotBitcoin?)

Venezuelan Explains How Bitcoin Saves His Family (#GotBitcoin?)

Quantum Computing Vs. Blockchain: Impact On Cryptography

This Fund Is Riding Bitcoin To Top (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin’s Surge Leaves Smaller Digital Currencies In The Dust (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Exchange Hits $1 Trillion In Trading Volume (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Breaks $200 Billion Market Cap For The First Time In 17 Months (#GotBitcoin?)

You Can Now Make State Tax Payments In Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)

Religious Organizations Make Ideal Places To Mine Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)

Goldman Sacs And JP Morgan Chase Finally Concede To Crypto-Currencies (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Heading For Fifth Month Of Gains Despite Price Correction (#GotBitcoin?)

Breez Reveals Lightning-Powered Bitcoin Payments App For IPhone (#GotBitcoin?)

Big Four Auditing Firm PwC Releases Cryptocurrency Auditing Software (#GotBitcoin?)

Amazon-Owned Twitch Quietly Brings Back Bitcoin Payments (#GotBitcoin?)

JPMorgan Will Pilot ‘JPM Coin’ Stablecoin By End Of 2019: Report (#GotBitcoin?)

Is There A Big Short In Bitcoin? (#GotBitcoin?)

Coinbase Hit With Outage As Bitcoin Price Drops $1.8K In 15 Minutes

Samourai Wallet Releases Privacy-Enhancing CoinJoin Feature (#GotBitcoin?)

There Are Now More Than 5,000 Bitcoin ATMs Around The World (#GotBitcoin?)

You Can Now Get Bitcoin Rewards When Booking At Hotels.Com (#GotBitcoin?)

North America’s Largest Solar Bitcoin Mining Farm Coming To California (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin On Track For Best Second Quarter Price Gain On Record (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Hash Rate Climbs To New Record High Boosting Network Security (#GotBitcoin?)

Bitcoin Exceeds 1Million Active Addresses While Coinbase Custodies $1.3B In Assets

Why Bitcoin’s Price Suddenly Surged Back $5K (#GotBitcoin?)

Zebpay Becomes First Exchange To Add Lightning Payments For All Users (#GotBitcoin?)

Coinbase’s New Customer Incentive: Interest Payments, With A Crypto Twist (#GotBitcoin?)

The Best Bitcoin Debit (Cashback) Cards Of 2019 (#GotBitcoin?)

Real Estate Brokerages Now Accepting Bitcoin (#GotBitcoin?)

Ernst & Young Introduces Tax Tool For Reporting Cryptocurrencies (#GotBitcoin?)

Recession Is Looming, or Not. Here’s How To Know (#GotBitcoin?)

How Will Bitcoin Behave During A Recession? (#GotBitcoin?)

Many U.S. Financial Officers Think a Recession Will Hit Next Year (#GotBitcoin?)

Definite Signs of An Imminent Recession (#GotBitcoin?)

What A Recession Could Mean for Women’s Unemployment (#GotBitcoin?)

Investors Run Out of Options As Bitcoin, Stocks, Bonds, Oil Cave To Recession Fears (#GotBitcoin?)

Goldman Is Looking To Reduce “Marcus” Lending Goal On Credit (Recession) Caution (#GotBitcoin?)

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