BlackRock Is Looking Into Bitcoin Futures
BlackRock is a U.S.-based asset management firm – with $6.3 trillion worth of assets under its management, it is the world’s largest company of its type. According to a Financial News report, BlackRock has established a working group which is looking into the cryptocurrency market and more specifically Bitcoin futures contracts. Apparently, the company has been examining blockchain technology for several years now.
BlackRock’s move of setting up a working group focused on cryptocurrency is particularly surprising given that the company’s CEO, Larry Fink, made some very harsh comments on Bitcoin less than a year ago, calling it “an index for money laundering”. Still, Fink has also said at one point that he believes cryptocurrency hold “huge opportunities”, but also qualified his statement by saying that the crypto market is mostly speculative at this point.
Of course, we should wait to see what conclusions the group reaches, but it’s interesting to see the financial industry’s giants taking cryptocurrency ever more seriously.
The cryptocurrency jumped around the time the news started circulating – BTC jumped from $6,360 to $6,560 in about two hours, and it’s probably not too much of a stretch to say the two events were interlinked to some extent.
A CNBC report says that according to their understanding, the working group in question has actually existed since 2015.
BlackRock is not the only finance powerhouse to be looking into crypto – the CEO of Fidelity Investments ($2.4 trillion assets under management), Abigail Johnson, is well known for her interest in cryptocurrency, and the company has been hiring people with skills in the blockchain field. Goldman Sachs has also announced they will be trading Bitcoin futures contracts for their clients.
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