The biggest promoter of Bitcoin, BlackRock's encryption ambitions.

Author: Nancy, PANews

A report stating that "BlackRock's IBIT fund inflows this year have surpassed those of the world's largest gold fund" has coincided with Bitcoin's return to $100,000 on May 8, becoming the focus of market attention.

Bitcoin ETFs take over the crypto community, making Wall Street an important buyer of Bitcoin, promoting the mainstreaming and compliance leap of this once marginal asset, and also becoming a key piece in BlackRock's global financial landscape.

BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company, manages assets of up to $11.5 trillion. However, this "apparent asset management giant" has long transcended its role as an asset manager. Known as the "shadow central bank," BlackRock is deeply involved in shaping global capital flows, policy directions, and the construction of systemic financial instruments.

From IBIT to BUIDL, BlackRock's on-chain layout

In the order of traditional finance, BlackRock has long been a player that controls the rules of the game. Today, this financial giant is quietly bridging the value gap between traditional capital and digital assets, attempting to reconstruct the future financial order.

One of the key unresolved issues in the crypto market over the past decade has been "When will the US SEC approve a Bitcoin spot ETF?" In this regard, dozens of institutions have come and gone, but have repeatedly hit walls. Until June 2023, BlackRock officially submitted its Bitcoin spot ETF application, which is not just a piece of paperwork, but a catalyst for market confidence. The market quickly realized: when even BlackRock is backing Bitcoin, regulatory approval is just a matter of time.

In January 2024, the SEC officially approved multiple Bitcoin spot ETFs, including BlackRock's IBIT. This event not only became a "watershed moment for Bitcoin compliance" but also signifies a redistribution of narrative power: BlackRock has brought Bitcoin onto the legitimate stage of mainstream finance with an ETF.

After IBIT went live, it quickly attracted a massive amount of institutional funds, not only ending Grayscale's GBTC monopoly on Bitcoin exposure but also surpassing the global largest gold ETF, GLD, in terms of capital inflow.

According to publicly available data, from the beginning of this year to now, IBIT has achieved a net inflow of approximately $6.97 billion, surpassing GLD's $6.29 billion during the same period. Despite Bitcoin's increase of only 1.4% during the same time, gold has risen by 24.9%, yet funds have flowed into IBIT against the trend, demonstrating the market's high recognition of its long-term allocation value.

Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, pointed out that during the phase of weak prices, capital inflows continued, confirming Bitcoin's asset allocation value as "digital gold." It is expected that the scale of BTC ETFs will reach three times that of gold ETFs within 3-5 years. Strategy Chairman Michael Saylor made an even bolder prediction, stating that BlackRock's IBIT will become the largest ETF in the world within ten years.

However, IBIT is just the starting point in BlackRock's bigger picture. Rather than saying that BlackRock is promoting an ETF, it is more accurate to say that it is reshaping a new financial infrastructure centered around tokenization.

In March 2024, BlackRock launched the tokenized money market fund BUIDL, becoming its first fully on-chain traditional asset fund. As of May 2025, BUIDL's TVL has exceeded $2.8 billion, firmly leading the global RWA sector, far ahead of competitors like WisdomTree and Franklin Templeton. This also means that BUIDL is no longer an experimental project, but a market-validated reality.

Furthermore, BlackRock has recently applied to establish DLT Shares and announced the completion of a $150 billion asset mapping on the blockchain, covering diverse fields such as real estate trusts and commodities. This case not only marks the commercialization and scaling of RWA but also extends on-chain finance from being an edge experiment to the traditional capital market.

The Comeback of Wall Street Losers

The starting point of it all may be traced back to an office in Manhattan in 1986.

In that year, Larry Fink was a hotshot star trader on Wall Street and the youngest managing director in the history of First Boston, leading the cutting-edge financial innovation of the time—collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs). However, a misjudgment in an interest rate bet caused his company to lose over $100 million, plunging his career into a low point. Yet, this financial Waterloo sparked a profound reflection on risk management, laying the seeds for BlackRock's future rise.

Two years later, Larry Fink, along with several former comrades, founded BlackRock Financial Management with the support of Blackstone Group, which was also the predecessor of BlackRock, with a starting capital of only $5 million. Unlike the prevailing trend of high-frequency trading and speculative arbitrage on Wall Street at that time, Larry Fink made risk management the core concept. This concept later became the underlying logic and moat for BlackRock's sweeping success in the global asset management industry.

With deep insights into the fixed income market and an innovative asset management model, BlackRock quickly emerged. By the end of 1994, BlackRock's assets under management (AUM) surged from $1.2 billion at inception to $53 billion, and in the same year, it officially spun off from The Blackstone Group, renaming itself "BlackRock," marking the beginning of its true global expansion.

BlackRock's core moat is not just its scale of assets but also the groundbreaking financial risk analysis platform it has developed—the Aladdin system. This risk control and asset allocation analysis platform is hailed as the "super brain" of the global capital markets, executing over 5,000 portfolio stress tests daily and calculating 180 million options adjustments weekly. In 2022 alone, it generated as much as $1.4 billion in revenue for BlackRock. More importantly, Aladdin has now become a vital piece of global financial infrastructure, utilized by over 200 major financial institutions worldwide, including UBS, Deutsche Bank, the Swiss National Bank, and even the Federal Reserve, for risk control and asset allocation management, with a service asset scale exceeding $20 trillion—almost equivalent to one-fifth of the global GDP. In a sense, BlackRock's influence has transcended the traditional notion of asset managers, acting as a "predictor" of global market sentiment and capital flows.

Moreover, BlackRock has also gained a voice in global capital allocation through its ETF business. After the housing bubble burst in 2008, the market urgently needed an investment tool with high transparency, low cost, and strong liquidity; ETFs quickly became an important choice for institutional and retail investors seeking risk diversification and asset allocation efficiency. Subsequently, in 2009, BlackRock acquired BGI, a subsidiary of Barclays in the UK, for $13.5 billion, obtaining the world's largest index fund brand, iShares ETF.

ETFs are not only passive investment tools but also a channel for international capital allocation. Whoever can be included in the index can obtain liquidity, and BlackRock has become the creator and referee of this global capital game. According to official disclosures, the assets under management of iShares ETFs have reached $3.3 trillion, managing over 1,400 ETFs that almost cover all major global markets. Moreover, through ETFs, BlackRock has gradually penetrated the shareholder structure of almost every large publicly listed company in the United States. According to 2023 data, the three giants of index funds, including BlackRock, are the largest single shareholders of over 90% of S&P 500 companies, becoming the "invisible hand" in the equity structure of American enterprises.

"Rotating Door", the secret weapon of BlackRock Capital's game.

What truly brought BlackRock into the global public eye was its role as a "behind-the-scenes central bank" during various financial crises. Particularly during the 2008 global financial crisis, as Lehman Brothers collapsed and AIG was on the brink of bankruptcy, the entire financial system was in jeopardy. The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve urgently needed an external professional institution that understood asset pricing and could manage clearing, and BlackRock took on this hot potato, not only assisting in the clearing of bad assets but also helping the Federal Reserve design the largest asset relief program in history, TARP.

Since then, BlackRock's role has transformed from merely being a player in the market to becoming a bridge for policy execution. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 once again caused a global market crash, and the Federal Reserve called upon this "old friend" once more, intervening in the market directly through ETFs in an unprecedented manner, with the execution of this action being carried out by BlackRock's iShares series of funds. This move has also been criticized by some as evidence of a "too close" relationship between BlackRock and the U.S. government. It can be said that BlackRock is both a private giant in the market and a trusted policy execution tool for the government.

Behind this lies a more hidden system: the revolving door between politics and business.

In the past, a large number of senior executives from BlackRock took on important positions in government agencies such as the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve after leaving the company, while some officials who had served in the U.S. government would also join BlackRock after their departure. This intertwining of political and business relationships often signifies a pre-emptive advantage under conditions of information asymmetry, providing BlackRock with a unique advantage for its strategic layout on the global stage.

BlackRock's reach is no longer limited to the financial sector. In recent years, it has continually expanded into major economic arteries such as energy, data, healthcare, logistics, and even ports. Recently, BlackRock also plans to acquire 43 port projects from Li Ka-shing's CK Hutchison for $22.8 billion. If the transaction is completed, BlackRock will become one of the actual controllers of the world's largest port network, involving over 100 key nodes, which will have a far-reaching impact on the operation of the global economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, such transactions have even received tacit approval and support from the U.S. government. In other words, BlackRock is not just a market participant, but an executor of great power geopolitical games.

The story of BlackRock is not just a successful example on Wall Street, but a practical textbook on how capital infiltrates power, shapes market rules, and influences the future in the era of globalization. It does not create news, but it creates rules; it does not govern directly, but it influences fiscal policy; it does not own companies, yet it is the largest shareholder behind almost all companies. The existence of this invisible giant has already permeated every corner of our lives.

Because of its high sensitivity and systemic influence on global financial pulses, BlackRock has taken the lead in perceiving the structural changes triggered by crypto assets. If the U.S. is unable to control its ballooning debt and fiscal deficits, the dollar's decades-long "status as a global reserve currency" may eventually give way to emerging digital assets such as bitcoin. BlackRock CEO Larry FinK said bluntly in his 27-page annual letter to investors in 2025, mentioning that tokenization is becoming a key force in reshaping financial infrastructure. If SWIFT is a postal service, tokenization is email itself – assets can circulate directly and in real time, bypassing all intermediaries. Tokenization will allow investment and earning to become more "democratic". This may not be the CEO's bold imagination, but a sober judgment of the future of financial sovereignty. (Related reading: BlackRock CEO's Annual Letter to Investors: Bitcoin May Challenge the Global Status of the US Dollar, Tokenization is the Financial Highway of the Future)

In the on-chain world, BlackRock attempts to dominate not only liquidity but also the establishment of standards, the construction of infrastructure, and the integration of regulation. As history has consistently shown, BlackRock's intentions go beyond merely "investing in assets"; they aim to set the rules of the game for the next generation of finance.