Larry Fink talked about the prospects of the crypto market from the perspective of BlackRock

The head of BlackRock has stated about the potential of Bitcoin

The head of BlackRock is "pleasantly surprised" by the high retail demand for assets in spot Bitcoin ETFs

Larry Fink, the head of the world's largest investment company BlackRock with assets over $10 trillion, expressed optimism about the long-term prospects of the first cryptocurrency. In an interview with the American television channel Fox Business, Fink stated that the cryptocurrency market is "developing towards greater liquidity and transparency," which, in his opinion, is a "pleasant surprise."

Fink's statements came amid growing investor interest in the spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund IBIT with assets of $17 billion. According to SoSoValue, since its launch in early January 2024, BlackRock's Bitcoin IBIT ETF has seen a net inflow of funds into the exchange-traded fund of $13.86 billion. The fund's balance holds 245,951 bitcoins, making BlackRock the holder of more than 1.17% of all bitcoins in circulation. He called the launch of such funds "the fastest-growing" in the history of the entire ETF market.

Regarding the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization — Ethereum (ETH) — Fink admitted that even if the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recognizes ETH as a security, it will not hinder the launch of spot ETFs based on it. In his opinion, this will strengthen regulatory control.

After the debut of a group of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S., several asset management companies, including BlackRock, Fidelity, and Ark Invest, have filed applications with the SEC to create spot ETFs on Ethereum. Craig Salm, the chief lawyer of the world's largest cryptocurrency asset manager Grayscale, is confident that the U.S. SEC will approve the launch of spot Ethereum funds as early as May.

On March 21, BlackRock announced the launch of its first fund of tokenized financial assets on the Ethereum blockchain. The new fund, USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), will invest in digital analogs of traditional financial assets.