Original title: (The Biggest Promoter of Bitcoin, BlackRock's Crypto Ambitions)
Original author: Nancy, PANews
A piece of news stating that 'BlackRock's IBIT has seen inflows exceeding 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. The Bitcoin ETF has taken over from the crypto community, making Wall Street a significant buyer of Bitcoin, pushing this once-marginal asset into mainstream acceptance and compliance, and becoming a key piece of BlackRock's global financial map.
BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company, manages assets up to $11.5 trillion. However, this 'apparent asset management giant' is far more than just an asset manager. Known as the 'shadow central bank,' BlackRock deeply participates in the formulation of global capital flows, the shaping of 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.
One of the core issues that has remained unresolved in the crypto market over the past decade is 'When will the U.S. SEC approve a Bitcoin spot ETF?' To this end, dozens of institutions have tried repeatedly but faced obstacles. It wasn't until June 2023 that BlackRock officially submitted its Bitcoin spot ETF application, which was not just a mere application but a catalyst for market confidence. The market quickly realized: when even BlackRock stands with Bitcoin, regulatory approval is just 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 moment for Bitcoin compliance' but also indicated a redistribution of narrative power: BlackRock brought Bitcoin onto the mainstream financial stage with just one ETF. After its launch, IBIT quickly attracted massive institutional funds, ending Grayscale's GBTC monopoly on Bitcoin exposure and surpassing the world's largest gold ETF GLD in capital inflows.
According to public data, from the beginning of this year to now, IBIT has garnered about $6.97 billion in net inflows, surpassing GLD's $6.29 billion during the same period. Despite Bitcoin's increase of only 1.4% during the same time, gold has risen by 24.9%, yet funds have flowed against the trend into IBIT, showing the market's high recognition of its long-term allocation value.
Bloomberg's senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas pointed out that the sustained inflow during periods of price weakness confirms Bitcoin's asset allocation value as 'digital gold,' predicting that the BTC ETF size will reach three times that of the gold ETF in 3-5 years. Strategy chairman Michael Saylor makes an even bolder prediction that BlackRock's IBIT will become the largest ETF in the world within ten years.
However, IBIT is just the starting point in BlackRock's larger picture. Rather than saying BlackRock is promoting an ETF, it is more accurate to say it is 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. As of May 2025, BUIDL's TVL has 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 signifies that BUIDL is no longer an experimental project but a market-validated reality.
Furthermore, BlackRock has recently applied to establish DLT Shares and announced the completion of on-chain mapping of $150 billion in assets, covering diverse areas like real estate trusts and commodities. This case not only marks the commercialization and scaling of RWA but also extends on-chain finance from marginal experiments into traditional capital markets.
The Comeback of Wall Street's Disappointed
The starting point of it all may be traced back to an office in Manhattan in 1986.
That year, Larry Fink was a hot star trader on Wall Street and the youngest managing director in the history of First Boston, leading the cutting-edge financial innovation of the time—mortgage-backed securities (CMOs). However, a miscalculation in interest rate speculation led his firm to lose over $100 million, marking a low point in his career. Yet this financial Waterloo ignited a profound reflection on risk management, planting the seeds for BlackRock's future rise.
Two years later, Larry Fink and several former allies, supported by Blackstone, founded Blackstone Financial Management Company, which is also the predecessor of BlackRock, with initial funding of only $5 million. Unlike the then-prevalent trends of high-frequency trading and speculative arbitrage on Wall Street, Larry Fink made risk management the core concept. 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 $1.2 billion at its inception to $53 billion, and in the same year, it officially spun off from Blackstone and rebranded as 'BlackRock,' commencing its true global expansion.
What underpins BlackRock's core moat is not just the scale of its funds but its groundbreaking 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, bringing in as much as $1.4 billion in revenue for BlackRock in 2022 alone. More importantly, today Aladdin has become a crucial part of global financial infrastructure, with over 200 major financial institutions worldwide, including UBS, Deutsche Bank, the Swiss National Bank, and even the Federal Reserve, using Aladdin for risk control and asset allocation management, managing assets exceeding $20 trillion, nearly equivalent to one-fifth of the global GDP. In a sense, BlackRock's influence has transcended the traditional definition of asset managers, becoming a 'predictor' of global market sentiment and capital flows.
Moreover, BlackRock also holds a significant voice in global capital allocation through its ETF business. After the 2008 housing bubble burst, the market urgently needed a transparent, low-cost, and highly liquid investment tool, and ETFs quickly became an important choice for institutions and retail investors seeking risk diversification and asset allocation efficiency. Subsequently, in 2009, BlackRock acquired BGI, a subsidiary of Barclays, for $13.5 billion, gaining the world's largest index fund brand, iShares ETF.
ETFs are not only passive investment tools but also channels for international capital allocation rights. Who can be included in the index gains liquidity; BlackRock has become the rule maker and referee of this global capital game. According to official disclosures, iShares ETF's asset scale has reached $3.3 trillion, managing over 1,400 ETFs, almost covering major global markets. Through ETFs, BlackRock has gradually penetrated into the shareholder structures of nearly every large publicly 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 companies in the S&P 500 index, becoming the 'invisible hand' in the U.S. corporate equity structure.
'The revolving door' is BlackRock's secret weapon in its capital game.
What truly brought BlackRock into the global public eye was its role as a 'behind-the-scenes central bank' during successive financial crises. Especially during the 2008 global financial crisis, with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and AIG on the brink of bankruptcy, the entire financial system was on the verge of collapse. The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve urgently needed an external professional institution that understood asset pricing and could handle the 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 relief plan in history, TARP.
Since then, BlackRock's role has shifted from merely being a player in the market to becoming a bridge for policy execution. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 once again caused a global market crash, and the Federal Reserve once again called upon this 'old friend,' intervening in the market directly through ETFs, with the action executed by BlackRock's iShares series of funds. This move has been criticized by some as an indication of an 'excessively close' relationship between BlackRock and the U.S. government. It can be said that BlackRock is not only a private giant in the market but also a trusted tool for government policy execution.
Behind this lies a more covert system: the revolving door between politics and business.
In the past, numerous senior executives from BlackRock took key positions in government agencies like the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve after leaving, while some officials who previously held positions in the U.S. government would join BlackRock after leaving. This intertwining of political and business relationships often implies a preemptive advantage under asymmetric information, providing BlackRock with a unique advantage in its global strategic layout.
Today, BlackRock's reach is no longer limited to the financial sector. In recent years, it has continually expanded into major economic arteries such as energy, data, healthcare, logistics, and even ports. Recently, BlackRock also plans to acquire 43 port projects owned by 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 critical nodes, which will have a more profound impact on the operation of the global economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, such transactions have even received tacit approval or support from the U.S. government. In other words, BlackRock is no longer just a market participant but an executor in the great power game.
The story of BlackRock is not just a successful example from Wall Street, but a real textbook on how capital penetrates power, shapes market rules, and influences the future in a globalized era. It does not create news but creates rules; it does not govern directly but influences fiscal policy; it does not own companies but is the largest shareholder behind almost all companies. The existence of this invisible giant has long permeated every corner of our lives.
Due to its high sensitivity to global financial trends and systemic influence, BlackRock was the first to perceive the structural changes brought about by crypto assets. 'If the United States cannot control its ever-expanding debt and fiscal deficit, the dollar's status as the 'global reserve currency,' maintained for decades, may eventually yield to emerging digital assets like Bitcoin,' said BlackRock CEO Larry Fink 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 circulate directly and in real-time, bypassing all intermediaries. Tokenization will democratize investment and returns. This may not just be the CEO's bold vision but a calm judgment of the future financial sovereignty landscape.
In the on-chain world, BlackRock aims to dominate not only liquidity but also the establishment of standards, the construction of infrastructure, and the connection with regulations. As history has always shown, BlackRock's intentions go beyond merely 'investing in assets' but rather whether it can set the game rules for the next generation of finance.
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