Blackrock pushes into the cryptoma market with Bitcoin private trust

Blackrock has announced the introduction of a Spot-Bitcoin private trust, which deepens the advance into digital assets, while the crypto industry is recovering from the consequences of a credit crisis.

The world's largest asset manager said on Thursday in a blog post that the private foundation would only be available to institutional customers in the USA, but announced only a few more details.

supervisory authorities have repeatedly rejected suggestions to offer listed spot bitcoin funds that would be open to small investors and referred to the need for investor protection.

The step of Blackrock brings the investment house, whose CEO Larry Fink Bitcoin has publicly criticized, possibly competing with Grayscale, the world's largest investment vehicle for cryptocurrencies.

It comes while the crypto industry has to deal with the consequences of an acute drop in prices such as Bitcoin, which has lost two thirds of its value since its all -time high last November. During this time, the overall market capitalization of cryptocurrencies fell from around 3.2 trillion dollars to less than $ 1 trillion.

"Despite the strong downturn in the market for digital assets, we still see a considerable interest in some institutional customers how they can use our technology and product capacities to access these assets efficiently and inexpensively," said Blackrock in a explanation.

"The introduction of Blackrock Bitcoin Fund is a sign of how far crypto has matured as an investment class," said Sui Chung, Managing Director of the crypto index provider CF Benchmarks.

At the beginning of this week, Blackrock agreed to connect his investment technology platform Aladdin to Coinbase, the crypto exchange. The network is often used in the fund management industry to connect asset managers, insurers and banks with the markets.

other fund managers immerse themselves in the cryptom market. In the past few months, Schroders have acquired a participation in the crypto-oriented fund manager Forteus, while Fidelity announced that investors would allow cryptocurrencies to their portfolios in 401 (K) pension plans.

The change from black rock to digital assets marks a significant development compared to earlier comments from Fink. In 2017, the CEO said: "Bitcoin only shows you how great the demand for money laundering in the world is" and added: "This is all that it is".

The Bitcoin computation of Blackrock also follows the company's earlier demands for global environmental, social and governance standards in order to strengthen the sustainability efforts. Bitcoin-which runs on an energy-intensive blockchain system-was criticized because of its CO2 footprint and its broader effects on the environment.