BlackRock’s Larry Fink on what’s really driving Bitcoin: ‘I truly don’t believe it’s a function of regulation’

It doesn’t matter if Donald Trump or Kamala Harris wins on November 5 for that to happen, the BlackRock CEO said.

BlackRock’s Larry Fink on what’s really driving Bitcoin: ‘I truly don’t believe it’s a function of regulation’

It doesn’t matter if Donald Trump or Kamala Harris wins on November 5 for that to happen, the BlackRock CEO said.

Greetings, Ed here.

At first it sounded like an unimportant reminiscence, a casual reference to the good old days on Wall Street with little significance for crypto investors.

Hardly.

When BlackRock CEO Larry Fink compared Bitcoin’s evolution with that of the mortgage-backed securities market of the 1980s, well, the analogy electrified crypto — with crypto mavens offering fresh takes on why the cryptocurrency “will go higher fast”.

The mortgage bond market is a $11 trillion colossus, and the idea that digital assets would be mentioned in the same breath by one of the guys who helped build that pillar of the US economy was not on anyone’s bingo card.

As Liam Kelly reported this week, Fink’s comments move the market, especially when he muses on where cryptocurrencies are headed.

BlackRock, the world’s top investment firm, manages the biggest Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, which sports more than $25 billion in net assets.

What was especially interesting about Fink’s comments, Liam wrote, was how unimportant regulation is to Bitcoin’s trajectory.

For the last three years, crypto has been obsessed with the machinations of Gary Gensler and the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and for good reason.

The agency’s crackdown could force the industry to fundamentally change how it operates.

Indeed, Joanna Wright reported this week how crypto players are “forum shopping” in the US court system to garner an advantage in their battle with the SEC.

But Fink, in a BlackRock earnings call on October 11, highlighted other forces driving Bitcoin’s growth: “analytics and data.” That’s what propelled mortgage bonds decades ago, and the same would happen with crypto, Fink said.

“I truly believe we will see a broadening of the market of these digital assets,” Fink said.

Bitcoin investors didn’t really need another reason to buy, but they got one anyway. The world’s top cryptocurrency surged another 11% in the last seven days and is approaching $70,000.

The last time Bitcoin crested that threshold was in June, and following a choppy summer the cryptocurrency is up 61% this year.

The market is getting so frothy that even the most exotic breed of memecoins are posting eye-watering numbers.

Aleks Gilbert chronicled the mad tale of GOAT, a coin based on an obscene meme that first went viral in the early ‘00s. It went from zero to $350 million in the space of days this week.

The mojo is rising.