How BlackRock, the World's Largest Asset Manager, Took Crypto Mainstream - Ep. 735
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Obviously, I had very high conviction in in what this could be and how big an unlock it would be to be able to have a mainstream accessible turnkey convenient Bitcoin exposure vehicle, but this has certainly exceeded even my fairly optimistic expectations. And as a firm, you know, we we had pretty optimistic projections, but, you know, I don't think anyone's ever gonna put down as their base or even maybe their bull case that year 1 is gonna rewrite the record book on inflows into the ETF category.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained. Your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of the crypto peons. I started covering crypto 9 years ago, and as a senior editor of Forbes was the 1st mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full time. This is the November 15th, 2024 episode of Unchained. Polkadot is the original and leading layer 0 blockchain with over 2,000 plus developers, and the Polkadot 2 point o upgrade will be a massive accelerator for the ecosystem. Join the community at polka.network/ecosystem/community. FBTC is the fastest growing omnicha
Hey, Laura. Thanks for having me on.
Yeah. Excited to chat with you. This is a very exciting time for the industry. Just to let people know, we're recording Tuesday afternoon. So if any relevant news breaks Wednesday or Thursday, it will not be included in the show, but there's a lot to talk about. The election has been huge for Ibit and for the whole crypto market generally. Ibit saw record volumes and inflows around the election, and on Monday, the Bitcoin ETFs had their 6th largest day in trading volume ever, $7,200,000,000 worth. I bet also surpassed BlackRock's gold ETF in terms of net assets. So, Ravi, what do you think is
Well, it's a good thing you had that disclaimer about a few days lag because the rate that things are changing, who who knows what'll happen by, the 15th, 3 days from now. But, obviously, it's been a pretty frenetic week or a couple of weeks. Certainly, a lot of the run up in in Bitcoin and in crypto generally in the last week has been a reaction to the US election and and the implications of that. And I think that, you know, part of what we're seeing as well is for maybe the first time this year where you've had a massive wave of new inflows into the ETFs and new demand buying, there isn't re
And so at this moment in time, you know, like I mentioned during the election and post the election, who is driving all this activity? Are you seeing new types of investors jumping in, or is it just that existing investors are more optimistic, or what do you think it is?
Yeah. So if you think about our investor base from an iShares perspective and really it's 3 segments, it's it's n investors direct, it's wealth advisory, and it's institutional. So that n investor direct channel, which can include everything from small dollar retail to ultra high net worth, in some cases, you know, billionaires net worth that have plowed into Ibid pretty much from the get go in in in record breaking numbers. The other two segments have been on a more gradual pace, certainly. Most of the wealth space today is approved on an unsolicited basis, so client clients can request it, b
So the last few years have been pretty bad for the industry in the US with senator Elizabeth Warren and SEC chair Gary Gensler politicizing crypto and preventing there from being common sense SEC rulemaking on crypto. And here we have now Trump and JD Vance. They're going to become the 1st crypto president and vice president. And then we also have 290 pro crypto officials who will be in
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