By
Mayowa Adebajo
May 14th, 2024
BlackRock announced its plans to form a working group to investigate the crypto industry and to assess potential benefits of involvement in Bitcoin.
The crypto community is actively discussing the intensive growth of Bitcoin price. One of the reasons that, according to experts, may have led to such a positive trend can be the news, which came from the multi-trillion dollar asset manager BlackRock. The company is considering a possibility to enter the crypto industry.
BlackRock which is the world’s largest exchange-traded fund provider made public its plans to create a working group to investigate the crypto market and to evaluate its potential involvement in Bitcoin.
Such a decision fully opposes previous BlackRock’s critical attitude towards cryptocurrency. The cross-industry working group, formed by BlackRock, will follow the example of such an industry’s giant as Goldman Sachs and will focus on several fields including a possibility to invest in Bitcoin futures.
According to unnamed sources familiar with the matter, BlackRock’s working group will also analyze how the company’s competitors are working in the sphere of cryptocurrencies and blockchain.
“Like most financial institutions, BlackRock has a working group that meets periodically to exchange information on blockchain and consists of employees from various parts of the business,” stated the company’s spokesperson.
Nevertheless, the representative of BlackRock in his comments didn’t mention their interest to cryptocurrencies while highlighted that they had been looking at blockchain for several years already, “recognizing potential for shared processes and data across market participants, clearing, settlement and reconciliation and simplified securities issuance.”
Now it looks like BlackRock is to follow in the footprints of Goldman Sachs that also has drastically change its opinion about cryptocurrencies.
Though Lloyd Blankfein who is the CEO at Goldman Sachs used to yell the journalists that Bitcoin was not for him, then it was announced that a special working group of experts was studying the opportunities that could be opened before the company thanks to the kaunch of a range of cryptocurrency-based products.
BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink also has never said something in favor of Bitcoin naming it “an instrument people use for money laundering.”
But now, taking into consideration the changes, many experts studying the crypto market suppose that the increased interest from the side of institutional investors will boost confidence in this market.
Some experts expect a new wave of interest to cryptocurrencies. According to CNBC’s trading advisor Ran Neuner, an upcoming influx will make us believe that the highs of 2017 were just a warm-up before a real game.
According to CoinMarketCap, after jumping $225 just in a couple of hours, Bitcoin is currently traded at $6,606.76. It means that it has gained nearly 4% over the last 24 hours. And it is a long-awaited good result as we haven’t seen Bitcoin one-day gain of more than 2 % since July 2.
Altcoins are also following this trend. By the press time, every coin from the top-10 list has gained between 4 and 8%.