Author: Nancy, PANews
A piece of news about 'BlackRock's IBIT inflow exceeding that of the world's largest gold fund this year' coincided with Bitcoin's return to $100,000 on May 8, becoming the focus of market attention.
Bitcoin ETFs have taken over the crypto community, making Wall Street an important buyer of Bitcoin, driving this once-marginal asset to mainstream acceptance and compliance, and becoming a key piece of BlackRock's global financial map.
BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company, manages up to $11.5 trillion in assets. However, this 'apparent asset management giant' is far beyond just being an asset manager. Known as the 'shadow central bank', BlackRock deeply participates in shaping global capital flows, policy directions, and the construction of systemic financial instruments.
From IBIT to BUIDL, BlackRock's on-chain layout
In the order of traditional finance, BlackRock has long been a player controlling the game rules. Now, this financial giant is quietly bridging traditional capital and digital assets, attempting to reconstruct the future financial order.
For the past decade, one of the core unresolved issues in the crypto market has been 'when will the SEC approve Bitcoin spot ETFs'. To this end, dozens of institutions have come and gone but repeatedly hit walls. Until June 2023, when BlackRock officially submitted its Bitcoin spot ETF application, which was not just an application but a catalyst for market confidence. The market quickly realized: when even BlackRock stands behind Bitcoin, regulatory approval is merely a matter of time.
In January 2024, the SEC officially approved several Bitcoin spot ETFs, including BlackRock's IBIT. This event not only became a 'watershed for Bitcoin compliance' but also signifies a redistribution of narrative power: BlackRock, through an ETF, brings Bitcoin into the mainstream financial arena.
IBIT quickly attracted massive institutional funds after its launch, ending Grayscale GBTC's monopoly on Bitcoin exposure and surpassing the global largest gold ETF GLD in capital inflows.
According to public data, from the beginning of this year to date, IBIT has garnered about $6.97 billion in net inflows, surpassing GLD's $6.29 billion during the same period. Despite Bitcoin's price increase of only 1.4% during the same period, gold rose by 24.9%, yet funds flowed into IBIT against the trend, demonstrating the market's high recognition of its long-term allocation value.
Bloomberg's senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas pointed out that the continuous capital inflow during the price downturn confirms Bitcoin's asset allocation value as 'digital gold', predicting that BTC ETF size will reach three times that of gold ETFs within 3-5 years. Strategy chairman Michael Saylor even bolder predicts that BlackRock's IBIT will become the largest ETF in the world in ten years.
However, IBIT is just the starting point in BlackRock's larger picture. Rather than promoting an ETF, it's reshaping a new financial infrastructure centered on tokenization.
In March 2024, BlackRock launched the tokenized money market fund BUIDL, becoming its first fully on-chain traditional asset fund. By May 2025, BUIDL's TVL had surpassed $2.8 billion, firmly holding the top position in the global RWA sector, far ahead of competitors like WisdomTree and Franklin Templeton. This also means that BUIDL is no longer an experimental project but a validated path by the market.
Furthermore, BlackRock has recently applied to establish DLT Shares and announced the completion of a $150 billion asset on-chain mapping, covering diverse fields such as real estate trusts and commodities. This case not only marks the commercial and scaling stage of RWA but also extends on-chain finance from a marginal experiment to traditional capital markets.
The comeback of Wall Street's losers
The starting point of it all may trace back to an office in Manhattan in 1986.
In that year, Larry Fink was a hot-shot trader on Wall Street, as well as the youngest Managing Director in the history of First Boston, spearheading cutting-edge financial innovations—mortgage-backed securities (CMOs). But a miscalculation in interest rate betting led to losses exceeding $100 million for his company, plunging his career into a trough. However, this financial Waterloo sparked a profound reflection on risk management, planting the seeds for BlackRock's rise.
Two years later, Larry Fink, with several former comrades and the support of Blackstone Group, founded Blackstone Financial Management Company, which is also the predecessor of BlackRock, with initial funding of only $5 million. Unlike the high-frequency trading and speculative arbitrage trends that were popular on Wall Street at the time, Larry Fink made risk management the core philosophy. This philosophy later became the underlying logic and moat for BlackRock's sweeping success in the global asset management industry.
With profound insights into the fixed income market and an innovative asset management model, BlackRock quickly emerged. By the end of 1994, BlackRock's assets under management (AUM) surged from the initial $1.2 billion to $53 billion, and that year it officially spun off from Blackstone Group, independently rebranding itself as 'BlackRock', initiating genuine global expansion.
What underpins BlackRock's core moat is not just the scale of funds but its epoch-making financial risk analysis platform—Aladdin. This risk control and asset allocation analysis platform is hailed as the 'super brain' of the global capital market, executing over 5,000 portfolio stress tests daily and calculating 180 million options adjustments weekly, generating as much as $1.4 billion in revenue for BlackRock in 2022 alone. More importantly, Aladdin has become an essential financial infrastructure globally, with over 200 large financial institutions, including UBS, Deutsche Bank, the Swiss National Bank, and even the Federal Reserve, using Aladdin for risk control and asset allocation management, servicing an asset scale exceeding $20 trillion, nearly equivalent to one-fifth of global GDP. In a sense, BlackRock's influence has already surpassed the traditional notion of an asset manager; it has become a 'predictor' of global market sentiment and capital flows.
Moreover, BlackRock also holds the discourse power of global capital allocation through its ETF business. After the 2008 real estate bubble burst, the market urgently needed a transparent, low-cost, and highly liquid investment tool, which made ETFs a crucial choice for institutions and retail investors seeking risk diversification and asset allocation efficiency. BlackRock subsequently acquired BGI, the largest index fund brand iShares ETF, from Barclays for $13.5 billion in 2009.
ETFs are not only passive investment tools but also channels for international capital allocation power. Those who can be included in the index can gain liquidity, and BlackRock has become the rule-maker and referee of this global capital game. According to official disclosures, iShares ETF assets have reached $3.3 trillion, managing over 1,400 ETFs, almost covering all major global markets. Through ETFs, BlackRock has gradually penetrated the shareholder structure of almost every large listed company in the U.S. According to data from 2023, the three giants of index funds, including BlackRock, are the largest single shareholders of over 90% of S&P 500 companies, becoming the 'invisible hand' in the equity structure of American businesses.
"Revolving Door", the secret weapon of BlackRock's capital game
What truly brought BlackRock into the global public eye was its role as a 'behind-the-scenes central bank' during various financial crises. Especially during the 2008 global financial crisis, as Lehman Brothers collapsed and AIG was on the brink of bankruptcy, the entire financial system was in jeopardy. The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve urgently needed an external professional institution that understood asset pricing and could handle clearing, and BlackRock took on this hot potato, not only assisting in the clearance of bad assets but also helping the Federal Reserve design the largest asset rescue plan in history, TARP.
Since then, BlackRock's role has transformed from being just a player in the market to becoming a bridge for policy execution. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 once again caused global market crashes, and the Federal Reserve called upon this 'old friend' again, unprecedentedly intervening in the market directly through ETFs, executed by BlackRock's iShares series of funds, a move that critics have deemed too close a relationship between BlackRock and the U.S. government. It can be said that BlackRock is both a private giant in the market and a trusted policy execution tool of the government.
Behind this lies a more hidden system: the revolving door between politics and business.
In the past, many senior executives of BlackRock took positions in the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve, and other government institutions after leaving, while some officials who had served in the U.S. government would join BlackRock after leaving. This intertwining of political and business relationships often implies a preemptive advantage under information asymmetry, providing BlackRock with a unique edge in its strategic layout on the global stage.
Today, BlackRock's reach is no longer limited to the financial sector. In recent years, it has continuously laid out plans in energy, data, healthcare, logistics, and even ports, among various major economic arteries. Recently, BlackRock also proposed to acquire 43 port projects from Li Ka-shing's CK Hutchison for $22.8 billion. If the deal goes through, BlackRock will become one of the actual controllers of the world's largest port network, involving over 100 key nodes, which will have a far-reaching impact on the operation of the global economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, such transactions have even received tacit approval and support from the U.S. government. In other words, BlackRock is no longer just a market participant but an executor of great power games.
The story of BlackRock is not just a successful example on Wall Street, but a realistic textbook on how capital penetrates power, shapes market rules, and influences the future in a globalized era. It does not make news, but it creates rules; it does not govern directly, but it influences fiscal policy; it does not own companies, but it is the largest shareholder behind almost all companies. The existence of this invisible giant has long permeated every corner of our lives.
Because of its high sensitivity to global financial dynamics and systemic influence, BlackRock was the first to sense the structural changes brought by crypto assets. 'If the U.S. cannot control the ever-expanding debt and fiscal deficit, the dollar's decades-long status as the 'global reserve currency' may eventually give way to emerging digital assets like Bitcoin.' BlackRock CEO Larry Fink candidly stated in his 27-page annual letter to investors in 2025, mentioning that tokenization is becoming a key force in reshaping financial infrastructure. If SWIFT is postal service, then tokenization is the email itself—assets can flow directly and in real-time, bypassing all intermediaries. Tokenization will make investment and returns more 'democratized'. This may not be just a bold vision from this CEO but a sober judgment on the future financial sovereignty landscape. (Related Reading: BlackRock CEO's Annual Letter to Investors: Bitcoin May Challenge the Dollar's Global Status, Tokenization is the Future's Financial Highway)
In the on-chain world, BlackRock seeks to dominate not only liquidity but also the establishment of standards, the construction of infrastructure, and regulatory coordination. As history has consistently shown, BlackRock's intent is never just to 'invest a certain amount of assets', but to determine whether it can set the game rules for the next generation of finance.
