Bitcoin reached a new 52-week high this morning after BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said that it was “digitizing gold”, thereby legitimizing a long-standing narrative among digital asset adopters. BlackRock is now in the running to launch the first ever spot Bitcoin ETF, following a surprise filing three weeks ago. The world’s largest asset manager has jumped into a crowded field, but included a rather unique feature in their filing, addressing a key SEC concern about surveillance-sharing agreements, which is now a fixture of nearly every other competing application, following recent re-filings.
The issue with these arrangements is that, if approved, Coinbase will be tapped to serve as the exchange partner. That may be an issue, considering Coinbase only represents a single-digit share Bitcoin’s global trading volume, and is currently in the midst of a lawsuit with the SEC regarding their alleged selling of unregistered securities.
Related Funds & Assets: Bitcoin (BTC-USD), ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO), Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), Coinbase Global, Inc. (COIN)
The unit price of Bitcoin (BTC) in USD terms shot past $31,400 on Thursday morning, reaching a height unseen in well over a year. In just the last month, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap is up by nearly 20%. The recent surge in Bitcoin has been partially spurred on by a sudden rush of asset managers and other investment service firms reviving a race to list the first spot Bitcoin ETF, set off by a surprise S-1 filing by BlackRock, in pursuit of registering and launching the iShares Bitcoin Trust exactly three weeks ago. Along with increased trading volume of BTC on exchanges, CCData shows that the average daily aggregate volumes of digital asset investment products snapped a two-month downturn to rebound with a 6.8% jump to $223 million in June. AMB Crypto writes that the volume of Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust product (GBTC), the industry’s most traded trust product, increased by almost 80% last month.
The latest leg of the rally followed a Fox Business interview with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, wherein he stated that Bitcoin is “digitalizing gold and “could revolutionize finance” – a massive stamp of legitimacy, considering BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, responsible for $9 trillion AUM in Q1. As an added level of confidence, BlackRock has successfully launched 575 ETFs, with just one denial on its record. Fink went on to add that “Instead of investing in gold as a hedge against inflation, a hedge against the onerous problems of any one country, or the devaluation of your currency whatever country you’re in – let’s be clear, Bitcoin is an international asset, it’s not based on any one currency and so it can represent an asset that people can play as an alternative.”
MRP has long characterized Bitcoin as a complementary asset to gold, emphasizing the similarities in each of these two commodities. Gold is essentially a yellow rock that ended up with just the right confluence of factors (durability, portability, divisibility, uniformity, limited supply, and acceptability) that characterize a strong form of money. Bitcoin embodies all of those same factors, aside from its lack of mass, a feature that makes it more portable and secure, but was specifically engineered to counter the debasement of currencies and establish a…
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