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BlackRock CEO says firm's clients haven't expressed much interest in Bitcoin and crypto
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Larry Fink, the CEO of investment manager BlackRock, says that he hasn’t been seeing a lot of demand for cryptocurrency as of late. Fink touched on cryptocurrencies in a recent interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box show.
“I think in the past, you’ve asked me about crypto and Bitcoin – again, in my last two weeks of business travel, not one question has been asked about that. That is just not part of the focus on retirement and long-term investors. We see very little in terms of investor demand on those types of things.”
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However, Fink did concede it’s possible that investors who want to park their money into crypto might not be the target audience for BlackRock. With around $9.5 trillion worth of assets under management, BlackRock is a giant in the investment space.
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While Bitcoin is not a focus for BlackRock, the investment giant is still involved to a smaller extent. In a February interview, BlackRock CIO Rick Rieder said that the company was “dabbling” in Bitcoin, and regulatory filings released in March revealed that the BlackRock Global Allocation fund held a position in Bitcoin futures contracts traded on the CME. The notional amount of the contracts at the date of expiration was about $6.1 million.
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In the recent Squawk Box interview, Larry Fink also discussed the recent boom among retail investors, who have rallied around “meme stocks” such as GameStop and AMC Entertainment. He said that he finds the rise of the retail investor exciting, as the involvement of more people in equity markets could potentially represent the first step towards improving financial literacy and encouraging more people to think about investing their money for the long term. Still, Fink added that the retail-driven speculative activity around meme stocks is “totally unrelated” with BlackRock and its clients.
"If we could improve financial literacy. if we could help more people focus on not just speculating of markets and the ups and downs but translating that into investing in the long run," $BLK's Larry Fink on meme stocks $AMC $GME. "I look at this as a possibly good first step." pic.twitter.com/Uqyssz75U6
— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) July 14, 2021