BlackRock’s chief investment officer Rick Rieder reportedly says the firm may look at increasing its Bitcoin (BTC) holdings.
Speaking on the Wall Street Journal’s Take On the Week podcast, Rieder, who oversees global fixed income and is the head of global allocation at BlackRock, says that the asset management giant only has a “very small” amount of BTC.
However, the CIO says BlackRock’s exposure to BTC could evolve along with public attitudes toward the top crypto asset by market cap.
“Time will tell whether it’s gonna be a big part of the asset allocation framework… I think over time, people become more and more comfortable with it.
If there is more and more receptivity, now we have more vehicles that people can utilize to get more comfortable with owning it and buying it and selling it and liquidating it… As you get more and more people that adopt it as an asset, we think the upside potential is real, which has been recognized recently.”
BlackRock, which is currently the largest asset manager in the world, successfully launched its iShares spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) last month and has reportedly accumulated billions of dollars worth of BTC to back it.
In an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said that he believes Bitcoin is a legitimate store-of-value asset that can protect against times of uncertainty – similar to gold but with the added bonus of a scarcer supply.
“I’m a believer in [Bitcoin] because I do believe it is an alternative source for wealth holding. I don’t believe it’s ever going to be a currency. I believe it’s an asset class. I think we’re going to create digital currencies. We’re going to use the technology for it. We’re going to use the blockchain…
I believe [Bitcoin] goes up if the world is more frightened, if people are fearful of geopolitical risk, if they’re fearful of their own risk. It’s no different than what gold represented over thousands of years. It is an asset class that protects you. And unlike gold, where we manufacture new gold, we’re almost at the ceiling of the amount of Bitcoin that will be created.”
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