The largest asset manager in the world launches Bitcoin Private Trust

BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, announced in a blog post on Thursday the launch of a new bitcoin private trust. BlackRock stated, “BitcoinBTC
is the oldest, largest and most liquid crypto-asset, and is currently the primary topic of interest from our clients within the crypto-asset space. Excluding stablecoins, bitcoin maintains close to 50 percent of the industry’s market capitalization.”

BlackRock highlighted its commitment to offering its clients a variety of investment portfolio choices. “Black stoneBLK
is committed to giving clients access to their choice of investment opportunities and has launched a spot bitcoin private trust. The trust is available to US institutional clients and seeks to track the performance of bitcoin, less expenses and liabilities of the trust.”

With bitcoin valued lower against the US dollar over the past five months, BlackRock stated that some of its institutional investors were still expressing interest in the digital asset. “Despite the sharp decline in the digital asset market, we continue to see significant interest from some institutional customers in how they can efficiently and cost-effectively access these assets using our technology and product capabilities,” the blog post said.

The firm also noted how organizations such as RMI and Energy Web are developing programs to bring greater transparency to sustainable energy use in bitcoin mining, and will monitor the progress of these initiatives. BlackRock also noted that four areas of digital assets had the potential to help their clients and capital markets more broadly, including permissioned blockchains, stablecoins, cryptoassets and tokenization.

With the recent announcement earlier this past week surrounding the partnership with Coinbase, BlackRock expressed how its regular customers would be able to track their bitcoin exposures along with their public and private investments. Overall, the largest asset manager in the world describing bitcoin as the oldest, largest and most liquid digital asset is certainly a signal of how big the space is growing and evolving into a part of the more traditional Wall Street investment portfolios.

Disclosure: I have some bitcoin. This article is not financial advice.