US asset management giant BlackRock’s Head of Digital Assets Robert Mitchnick predicts wealth funds, pension funds and endowments could start trading spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the coming months, according to Coindesk, a cryptocurrency news site.
BlackRock is seeing “a re-initiation of the discussion around bitcoin” related to allocations to the world’s largest cryptocurrency and portfolio construction, Mitchnick was quoted as saying in an interview with the news site published on May 6.
“Many of these interested firms – whether we’re talking about pensions, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, insurers, other asset managers, family offices – are having ongoing diligence and research conversations, and we’re playing a role from an education perspective,” he says.
According to Mitchnick, the interest is not new as the company had been talking about bitcoin to these institutions for several years.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, launched a spot bitcoin ETF in January after the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved the launch of the first batch of the funds.
BlackRock had over US$10 trillion of assets under management as of end-2023.
