The World’s Biggest Asset Manager Is About To Start Buying Bitcoin

Is the world’s largest asset manager about to convert a small portion of its trillions in assets under management into bitcoin? According to two SEC filings, BlackRock, the Fed’s favorite intermediary to manipulate markets may be set to make allocations to bitcoin futures via some of its funds.

As first spotted by MacroScope, on January 20 BlackRock made its first mention of potentially buying bitcoin assets in prospectuses filed for its BlackRock Strategic Income Opportunities and BlackRock Global Allocation Fund Inc.

BlackRock just filed documents with the SEC that contain extensive discussion of Bitcoin. Excerpt: “Certain Funds may engage in futures contracts based on bitcoin.”

This appears to be the first time BlackRock has made such mentions.

Link to filings:https://t.co/qREGtJjIov

— MacroScope (@MacroScope17) January 20, 2021

In the filings Blackrock reveals that “certain Funds may engage in futures contracts based on bitcoin” and detail potential risks for such activities, noting that:

“A Fund’s investment in bitcoin futures may involve illiquidity risk, as bitcoin futures are not as heavily traded as other futures given that the bitcoin futures market is relatively new.”

BlackRock also noted that “[t]he only bitcoin futures in which the Funds may invest are cash-settled bitcoin futures traded on commodity exchanges registered with the CFTC”, a point we discussed yesterday when we expanded on just how limited the universe of eligible bitcoin assets available to Wall Street is.

To be sure, as Block Crypto notes, the filings themselves don’t definitively say that BlackRock funds are on the cusp of buying bitcoin future. But such filings – which first reveals potential risk factors  – have been known to predate these kinds of moves, indicating that BlackRock is at least laying down the regulatory tracks to conduct allocations if it so chooses.

Last month, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink remarked during a panel appearance that bitcoin is gaining legitimacy as an asset class, but cautioned that “[w]e have to go through many markets to see if it’s going to be permanently real.”

And just to confirm that it’s a matter of when not if BlackRock dips into the best performing assets of the century, it is also seeking to hire a blockchain lead, a vice president-level role.