The leader of BlackRock’s digital asset unit aimed Wednesday to dispel perceptions of Bitcoin as a risky investment as the cryptocurrency market swoons.
In an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box, BlackRock Digital Asset Head Robert Mitchnick said the cryptocurrency industry has promoted the idea that Bitcoin is a risk-on asset, despite the fact the token is “global, scarce, non- sovereign, decentralized.”
A risk-on asset is an investment such as a stock that poses at least some possibility of financial loss to investors.
“What we’ve seen lately seems to be self- fulfilling and actually a self-inflicted wound by some of the research and commentary that the industry does, leaning into this idea of it as a risk- on asset at times,” Mitchnick told CNBC.
U.S. regulators approved spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds exchange-traded funds early last year, widening institutional investors’ access to the world’s oldest cryptocurrency. BlackRock’s application for a bitcoin ETF is widely considered a turning point in issuers’ efforts to win long-sought approval for these funds.
BlackRock’s application for a bitcoin ETF is widely considered a turning point in issuers’ efforts to win long-sought approval for these funds.
The ETFs now manage about $100 billion in assets with BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT)
