BlackRock CEO Larry Fink on Monday weighed in on the firm's pending Bitcoin exchange-traded fund application following a wild morning after Cointelegraph reported it had been approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The news outlet retracted the story shortly after publication.
"I can't talk about the specifics of anything, I think it's just an example of the pent-up interest in crypto. We are hearing from clients around the world about the need for crypto," Fink said Monday afternoon during an appearance on "The Claman Countdown," while declining to comment on the status of the application.
Bitcoin rallied nearly 10% before settling back to the $28,000 level after the erroneous report. "Some of this rally is way beyond the rumor — I think the rally today is about a flight to quality, with all the issues around the Israeli war now, global terrorism, and I think there are more people running into a flight to quality," he added.
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FOX Business was the first to confirm the report was inaccurate, sharing the details on X, formerly Twitter.
In June, the firm, with about $9 trillion in assets, became the latest to file with the SEC for a spot Bitcoin ETF. The firm’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, if approved by regulators, will use Coinbase Custody as its custodian and would give investors exposure to the largest cryptocurrency by market cap without directly buying it, while a spot Bitcoin ETF would track Bitcoin's underlying market price.
It also is among a long list of firms with similar applications that got nixed by the SEC, including Grayscale, which is suing the SEC over the rebuttal. Fidelity and CBOE have also been shot down by regulators.
"What we're trying to do with crypto is make it more democratized with all of crypto and making it much cheaper for investors," Fink said during an interview on "The Claman Countdown" in July.
Other ETFs that offer exposure to Bitcoin through the cryptocurrency industry and not the crypto itself include the Bitwise Crypto Industry Innovators ETF, ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF and the Wisdomtree Enhanced Commodity Strategy ETF.
