Larry Fink now calls Bitcoin ‘digital gold’ after once calling it ‘an index of money laundering’ — and his fund controls over $60 billion of it

Of course, Bitcoin has a long history of winning over its critics.

Even Michael Saylor, the Bitcoin bull who transformed Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, into the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder, was once a skeptic. In 2013, Saylor famously declared that Bitcoin’s “days are numbered.” Today, Strategy holds more than 845,000 BTC on its balance sheet, according to BitcoinTreasuries.NET.

For Fink, the epiphany may have been driven partly by Bitcoin’s appeal as a “debasement trade” — a scarce asset investors can turn to when they’re worried about currencies losing purchasing power. But the business opportunity was impossible to ignore.

In January 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) alongside 10 other spot Bitcoin ETFs, giving investors a regulated and familiar way to gain direct exposure to Bitcoin’s price without having to buy or custody the cryptocurrency themselves.

Then IBIT started breaking records.

As CoinDesk reported, the fund reached $70 billion in assets in just 341 trading days, making it BlackRock’s biggest fee-generating ETF. When Bitcoin surged above $126,000 last October, IBIT briefly approached $100 billion in assets, reaching that threshold five times faster than any ETF in history, according to Bloomberg.

Wall Street access doesn’t eliminate Bitcoin risk

While IBIT made it easier for investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin — and helped broaden its appeal beyond crypto’s traditional base — it didn’t insulate them from the asset’s notoriously volatile swings.

That became painfully clear this year. By June, Bitcoin had fallen below $60,000, marking a roughly 53% decline from its October peak.

The selloff also tested investors’ appetite for Bitcoin ETFs. U.S. spot Bitcoin funds suffered a record eight consecutive weeks of net outflows between May and early July, shedding roughly $8.3 billion over that stretch, according to SoSoValue data analyzed by The Block.

The waters have steadied somewhat since then, with Bitcoin reclaiming $80,000 after a powerful rebound that began in August.

The rally gained momentum after the Treasury announced it would at least double buybacks of longer-dated government debt, a move that helped ease pressure on bond yields and boosted risk assets. Around the same time, President Donald Trump hosted crypto and finance executives at the White House, where he urged Congress to pass a “fair version” of the crypto-focused CLARITY Act.

But the rebound doesn’t erase what came before. ETF investors have learned that wrapping Bitcoin in a familiar Wall Street product doesn’t make its sharp swings disappear.

BlackRock’s answer to that volatility isn’t to avoid Bitcoin altogether, but to size the exposure accordingly.