BlackRock CEO Says Bitcoin Can Possibly "Evolve Into a Global Market"
As Bitcoin continues its foray into institutional finance, BlackRock chairman and CEO Larry Fink has become the latest Wall Street representative to provide commentary.
As reported by MarketWatch, Fink voiced his thoughts in a conversation with former Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney at the Council on Foreign Relations, stating that "Bitcoin has caught the attention and the imagination of many people. Still untested, pretty small market relative to other markets."
He was further quoted saying, "these big giant moves every day…it’s a thin market. Can it evolve into a global market? Possibly."
According to CNBC, Fink also noted that 'having a digital currency has a real impact on the U.S. dollar' in that it makes it 'less relevant' to foreign holders of the world's primary reserve currency.
Bitcoin Has Peaked BlackRock's Interest
BlackRock is the world's leading asset manager, with $7.43 trillion in assets under management at the end of 2019.
Fink's comments come just over a week after BlackRock's CIO of Fixed Income Rick Rieder spoke about Bitcoin on CNBC's Squawk Box, stating "Bitcoin is here to stay."
Rieder cited "particularly millennials' receptivity" as one reason why digital currencies have gained momentum on the world stage, and further elaborated on Bitcoin's durability in comparison to gold:
Do I think it's a durable mechanism that [...] will take the place of gold to a large extent? Yeah, I do, because it's so much more functional than passing a bar of gold around.
The asset management firm's interest in Bitcoin follows a growing list of testimonials from Wall Street veterans and institutional investors, as Bitcoin has continued its growth trajectory this year and most recently touched its all-time high price range.
Previously, Stan Druckenmiller spoke positively of Bitcoin, commenting that "if the gold bet works, the Bitcoin bet will work even better." Meanwhile, Paul Tudor Jones has likened investing in Bitcoin to investing in early Apple or Google.
A note to institutional clients of Citibank this month included a price prediction of over $300,000 by the end of 2021. Southeast Asian bank DBS is working on a cryptocurrency exchange tailored towards institutional clients, as an accidental premature release of a landing page revealed in October.
Between August and September, MicroStrategy famously purchased 38,250 bitcoin, an investment that, at press time, counts almost $300 million in unrealized profits.
In October, Jack Dorsey's Square allocated one percent of its assets to Bitcoin.
To put things into perspective, one percent of BlackRock's asset under management would be $74 billion, or a fifth of Bitcoin's market cap today.