The real reason behind BlackRock boss Larry Fink’s sudden love of Bitcoin

Happy Wednesday!

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink attributed Bitcoin’s rise to a “flight to quality.”

But the asset has other things going for it, he said in 2020.

Let’s dive into it.

Capturing the imagination

After notoriously referring to Bitcoin as a means for money laundering, Fink changed his tune in 2020 when he stated the top cryptocurrency had “caught the attention and the imagination of many people.”

”One of my important investors was on a television show in the last few days. He spoke about Bitcoin, monetary policy, and Covid,” Fink said during a keynote session at the Council on Foreign Relations at the start of the pandemic.

“The hits on BlackRock’s website were 3,000 on Covid, 3,000 hits on monetary policy, and 600,000 hits on Bitcoin. Many people are fascinated by it. Many people are excited about it.”

If the company is tracking hits to its site, it must also know a thing or two about the demographics of that internet traffic.

Fast forward to 2023 and BlackRock’s iShares unit has filed an application to launch its own spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund.

The efforts to draw in young money come as a generational shift in wealth from baby boomers to millennials — referred to by some commentators as the great wealth transfer — may put billions of dollars in the hands of younger investors in coming years.

A third quarter insights report by Coinbase shows more than one in three people from the millennial and Gen Z age bracket own crypto, while only 12% of older generations do.

BlackRock is not the only institutional investors to aim for the younger crowd.

Fidelity Digital Assets, the crypto arm of finance giant Fidelity, has taken to X and TikTok to promote blockchain education to younger generations.

VanEck, founded in 1955, has gained over 7,000 followers on X since beginning its “Enter the Ether” marketing campaign, which promotes the launch of its Ether futures ETF, in September.

And all three financial firms have spot Bitcoin ETF applications awaiting SEC approval.

“Some of these companies introducing these products may market to a new client segment,” Giovanni Vicioso, head of crypto at the CME Group, told DL News. “It may bring participants that are currently not in the space.”

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 2% in the last 24 hours, reaching $35,361.
• Ethereum rose by 0.5% in the same period, at $1,886.
• Toncoin and Polygon are both up 8.1%

What we’re reading

• Arbitrum DAO consultants to get $1.3m salaries under new proposal: ‘More than I pay for Harvard lawyers’ — DL News
• Stablecoin Issuer Circle Internet Considering 2024 IPO — Bloomberg
• Sam Bankman-Fried and the People Who Gave Up Their Money for Nothing — The New York Times

Tyler Pearson is a Researcher at DL News. Got a tip? Reach out at ty@dlnews.com