Bloomberg's James Seyffart on stage with BlackRock's Robert Mitchnick at Bitcoin 2024. Photo: Brady Dale/Axios
Robert Mitchnick, head of digital assets at BlackRock, said on stage at Bitcoin 2024 that he expects major wealth advisers to start soliciting its bitcoin ETF this year, describing it as "likely."
Why it matters: Once major wealth advisers start showing the new instrument to clients, that should open a giant new wave of buyers — for products that came out of the gate stronger than any other ETF in history.
What they're saying: Mitchnick called out what he describes as the bitcoin "punditry community" for describing the cryptocurrency as a risk asset.
"One, I think it's fundamentally inaccurate and, two, I think it's massively unhelpful," he said on stage.
Mitchnick argued that while bitcoin is heavily tied to real interest rates, it isn't correlated well to anything else, provided you take a long-term view.
Zoom in: He argued that holders of the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) seem to be long term. The fund has only had one down day in terms of outflows, despite some big swings in price.
What's next: With bitcoin and ether ETFs in the bag, BlackRock is looking at other facets of the crypto economy. Similar to the view we got from Google yesterday, Mitchnick likes stablecoins.
"We think that has the potential to transform many elements of our global payments system," he said.
