Every year BlackRock CEO Larry Fink issues a letter to his investors explaining what to expect for the future. In prior years he has pushed ESG investing, and purchasing carbon credits to offset carbon emissions all while lining his pockets with higher fees for coordinating these "carbon neutral" or "carbon negative investments." Often times these investor letters are taken as gospel, forcing companies in line with the common narrative. But as these ESG investments lost money (losing 20% on average in 2022) they have received pushback. Louisiana removed $794 million from one such BlackRock fund.
With this newest letter, BlackRock is delving into the "digital assets" ecosystem. "If there’s one part of financial services that’s caught the headlines over the past year, it’s digital assets, not least due to the collapse of FTX", noting "very interesting developments are happening in the digital asset space. In many emerging markets – like India, Brazil and parts of Africa – we are witnessing dramatic advances in digital payments, bringing down costs and advancing financial inclusion" - media outlets like Bitcoin Magazine will try and spin this as a positive - as with their recent tweet:
But if you take a few moments to actually read Larry Fink's letter, you know this is anything but positive - he notes Bitcoin as a "media obsession" and states that BlackRocks digital asset investments will be focused on exploring "the digital assets ecosystem, especially areas most relevant to our clients such as permissioned blockchains and tokenization of stocks and bonds." This flies in the face of a decentralized and permissionless network that brings financial inclusion to the globe, which cannot be censored or controlled by a government or centralized entity. I wouldn't expect Larry Fink or BlackRock to foster Bitcoin adoption as it operates outside of their control. They will remain in the comfortable area of creating permissioned assets that they control.
As always, with the information that circulates twitter or anywhere else for that matter - make sure to do your own research, and make your own judgments.