BlackRock wants to steal your crypto, don’t let them.

BlackRock, Inc. (BLK), the world’s LARGEST asset manager, is preparing to offer cryptocurrency trading services to investor clients. They manage over $10 trillion in assets via public pension schemes, family funds, endowments, and sovereign wealth funds.

Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, confirmed that they are exploring how to serve clients with digital currencies, saying it is largely due to increasing interest from clients. AKA if they do not offer their clients crypto - their clients will go somewhere else. So they've been pressured to so do, they don't really want to. Last July Fink said in an interview he is NOT seeing much demand for digital assets - Five years ago, Fink famously called Bitcoin an “index of money laundering.”

But now they are using the Russia-Ukraine conflict as an excuse, saying it has pushed countries to reassess currency dependencies and look to them as means of payments, bringing down the costs of cross-border transactions for both sides of the conflict, and opening up interest for the rest of the world.

“BlackRock is studying digital currencies, stablecoins and the underlying technologies to understand how they can help us serve our clients" - "A global digital payment system, thoughtfully designed, can enhance the settlement of international transactions while reducing the risk of money laundering and corruption" - "[crypto] can also help bring down costs of cross-border payments, for example when expatriate workers send earnings back to their families."  he wrote.

Those invested with BlackRock will be able to trade cryptocurrency through Aladdin (short for “Asset, Liability, Debt and Derivative Investment Network”) - their integrated investment management platform.

Just last month, they listed their iShares exchange-traded fund (ETF) to allow investors to gain exposure to the blockchain and cryptocurrency market without directly investing in crypto. It will not directly track cryptocurrencies but U.S. and international companies involved in the space, such as exchanges, most of which (11.45%) being allocated to Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S (and one of the biggest in the world). The ETF will also track some Bitcoin mining companies like Marathon Digital Holdings (11.19%) and Riot (10.41%) and also PayPal because they launched crypto services back in 2020. 

Moreover, BlackRock was an investor in a $400 million fundraising round for Circle Internet Financial, the crypto-focused company that manages the stablecoin USD Coin. Circle raised $1.1 billion and is planning to go public through a special-purpose acquisition company. The USD Coin, or USDC, is the second-largest stablecoin (about $51 billion in circulation). Larry Fink said BlackRock has been working with Circle as a manager of some of Circle’s cash reserves and expects BlackRock to eventually be the primary manager of Circle’s reserves.

While this type of adoption allows giant whales to borrow from BlackRock, pledging crypto assets as collateral similar to how Wall Street banks and large financial institutions like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citibank are creeping into cryptocurrencies, best believe these legacy financial institutions do not have our best DeFi interests at heart.

Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder (and Bitcoin lover) has advocated for an “enemies list” of people opposed to Bitcoin, including Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon, and Larry Fink (Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Chase, and BlackRock, respectively).

These billionaires (or trillionaires even) know what will make them money and it’s make us believe we need their services. WE SHOULD NOT want these giant centralized powers controlling our cryptocurrency. There are approximately 20 or so people inside BlackRock evaluating crypto right now testing the waters and wanting to start making some money from this system.

There is no mention of crypto in Larry Fink's 2022 Chairman's Letter to shareholders, but best believe they are cooking something in the back kitchen and it doesn't not have any 'personal financial freedom' as an ingredient.

Did you know? BlackRock owns 16.3% of MicroStrategy, whose CEO Michael Saylor is one of the most well known Bitcoin bulls.

The timetable for BlackRock unveiling their crypto services is unclear.

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