Great news from BlackRock's ETF: Bitcoin is progress

Today, among the main news, an screenshot of a promotional image of BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF is circulating on X.

The screenshot captures the graphics of the ad that BlackRock has been using for days to promote its Bitcoin ETF even in the world’s leading financial newspapers, such as the Wall Street Journal.

Latest news from BlackRock’s ETF: Bitcoin as progress

This ad is dominated by the phrase “Bitcoin ETFs have landed”, but probably the most interesting thing is what they write at the bottom below the image of the landed plane.

They write:

“Take your share of progress”.

The reference to Bitcoin is explicit and evident, so much so that from this advertisement it is possible to deduce that BlackRock is proposing Bitcoin to its clients as an investment in progress.

The senior analyst on Bloomberg’s ETFs, Eric Balchunas, very attentive to the dynamics related to the new Bitcoin ETFs, points out how interesting it is that BlackRock does not compare Bitcoin to a currency or a commodity, but to progress.

Furthermore, the use of the word “share”, often used for stock quotes as well, suggests that BlackRock is proposing Bitcoin as an investment in an innovative technological initiative, and not in a currency or commodity like gold.

After all, even the historical Next Generation Internet ETF by Ark has a portion of its portfolio consisting of BTC derivatives.

BlackRock’s IBIT

Technically, the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF, IBIT, has been launched and is managed by iShares, which is actually a subsidiary of BlackRock. So, even though it is actually called iShares Bitcoin Trust, with ticker IBIT, it can be easily defined as BlackRock’s ETF on Bitcoin.

Eric Balchunas defines this BlackRock advertisement as “simple, modern, and effective”, with a perfect balance between the boring advertising of legacy funds and the more modern advertisements targeting younger demographics.

Furthermore, it hypothesizes that upstream of this initiative there could even be a change in communication strategy of BlackRock itself, moving from “queen of liquidity” to something different.

BlackRock has been around since 1988, more than 35 years, and is the world’s largest asset manager. Furthermore, it is a leader in the US market when it comes to ETFs, issued and managed by its subsidiary iShares.

On the iShares homepage it reads that “iShares is driving progress for millions of people”, and this seems to confirm Balchunas’ hypothesis.

Furthermore, the same home page is literally dominated by IBIT advertising.

BlackRock’s turning point according to the latest news on Bitcoin ETFs

The 2024 iShares report is not by chance entitled “On the road from saving to investing”, because it wants to highlight how the investment strategies that the company is proposing this year are different from the past.

The mere management of savings is the strategy that underlies the definition of “queen of liquidity” that Balchunas assigns to BlackRock, while the report for 2024 reveals that a change is underway, or perhaps even a transformation.

It should not be forgotten that in recent years initiatives like Ark’s, which focus mainly on investments by putting on the market managed ETFs that have better returns compared to mere cash management, are probably challenging conservative strategies like BlackRock’s. On the other hand, for example, the S&P 500 index has risen from 2,700 to over 5,000 points in the last 5 years.

In such a context, it makes perfect sense that BlackRock’s new communication strategy also focuses on Bitcoin.

In the 2025 report by iShares, it is also stated that the company believes that people are actually deciding to move from saving to investing, because they hope for a better future and believe that long-term financial security and wealth creation are within their reach.

ETFs are specifically designed to provide less experienced investors with simple financial instruments to invest in.

This could ultimately prove to be a turning point not only for BlackRock and other asset managers, but also for Bitcoin.

According to Balchunas, this change could also be due to a greater propensity for risk and a greater awareness of the risk itself, in the financial field, in the face of greater profit ambitions.

Bitcoin is perfect

In a scenario like this, Bitcoin indeed seems to be a perfect tool for such a change.

This is a risk-on asset, not risk-off, but it opposes an increase in risks with an increase in potential.

It is possible that the new generations are less conservative and more ambitious than the previous ones when it comes to wealth management.

Furthermore, the basic idea is not at all to move all investments to risk-on assets, but to add some risk-on assets even in more conservative strategies, perhaps with very low percentages.

For example, there has been a hypothesis circulating for some time that all long-term investment strategies could include a percentage close to 1% of Bitcoin, a percentage low enough to minimize risks, but high enough to make any potential gains significant.

The goal of long-term asset management is not to earn a lot, but at least not to lose and to fight against the loss of purchasing power of the currency due to inflation. In a period of high inflation, it is more than obvious that one seeks slightly higher returns, and to achieve this it is necessary to increase exposure to risk-on assets.