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

Bitcoin ETF takes over the encryption community, making Wall Street an important buyer of Bitcoin, promoting the leap of this once marginal asset towards mainstream and compliance, and becoming a key piece in BlackRock's global financial landscape.

Written by: Nancy, PANews

A piece of news about "BlackRock IBIT's inflow of funds exceeding that of the world's largest gold fund this year" has made Bitcoin's return to $100,000 on May 8 a focal point of market attention.

Bitcoin ETF takes over the encryption community, making Wall Street an important buyer of Bitcoin, promoting the leap of this once marginal asset into mainstream and compliance, and also becoming a key piece of BlackRock's global financial landscape.

BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company, manages up to $11.5 trillion in assets. However, this "superficially large asset management giant" has long since transcended its role as an asset manager. Known as the "shadow central bank," BlackRock is deeply involved in shaping global capital flows, influencing policy directions, and constructing 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. Now, this financial giant is quietly opening up the value bridge between traditional capital and digital assets, attempting to reconstruct the future financial order.

Over the past decade, one of the core issues hanging in the balance in the encryption market has been "When will the U.S. SEC approve the Bitcoin spot ETF?" To this end, dozens of institutions have come and gone, but have repeatedly hit walls. Until June 2023, BlackRock officially submitted its application for a Bitcoin spot ETF, which is not just an application, but also 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 marks a "watershed moment for Bitcoin compliance" but also signifies a redistribution of narrative power: BlackRock has brought Bitcoin onto the mainstream financial stage with an ETF.

After its launch, IBIT quickly attracted massive institutional funds, not only ending Grayscale's GBTC monopoly on Bitcoin exposure but also surpassing the capital inflow of the world's largest gold ETF GLD.

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 this 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.

Bloomberg's senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas pointed out that during periods of price weakness, Bitcoin continues to attract capital, confirming its asset allocation value as "digital gold." He expects that within 3-5 years, the scale of BTC ETF will reach three times that of gold ETFs. Strategy Chairman Michael Saylor made an even bolder prediction that BlackRock's IBIT will become the world's largest ETF in ten years.

However, IBIT is just the starting point in BlackRock's larger vision. 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 surpassed $2.8 billion, firmly holding the top position in the global RWA track, far ahead of competitors such as 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 the on-chain mapping of $150 billion in assets, covering diverse areas such as real estate trusts and commodities. This case not only marks the commercialization and scaling stage of RWA but also extends on-chain finance from marginal experimentation to traditional capital markets.

The Comeback of Wall Street Losers

The starting point of everything 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 (CMO). However, a misstep in an interest rate bet caused his company to lose over $100 million, plunging his career into a low point. But this financial Waterloo sparked a deep reflection on risk management, planting the seeds for BlackRock's future rise.

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

With profound 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 its inception to $53 billion, and in the same year, it officially spun off from Blackstone Group and rebranded as "BlackRock," marking the beginning of its true global expansion.

BlackRock's core moat is not only the scale of funds, but also the development of an epoch-making financial risk analysis platform - Aladdin (Aladdin) system, a risk control and asset allocation analysis platform, known as the "super brain" of the global capital market, performing more than 5,000 portfolio stress tests per day and calculating 180 million option adjustments per week, bringing BlackRock up to $1.4 billion in revenue in 2022 alone. What's more, Aladdin is now a global financial infrastructure, with more than 200 of the world's largest financial institutions, including UBS, Deutsche Bank, the Swiss National Bank, and even the Federal Reserve, using Aladdin for risk control and asset allocation management, serving more than $20 trillion in assets, equivalent to almost one-fifth of global GDP. In a sense, BlackRock's influence has surpassed that of asset managers in the traditional sense, and it is also a "predictor" of global market sentiment and capital flows.

Furthermore, BlackRock has also gained the power of discourse in global capital allocation through its ETF business. After the 2008 real estate bubble burst, the market urgently needed an investment tool with high transparency, low cost, and strong liquidity, and 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, gaining the world’s largest index fund brand, iShares ETF.

ETFs are not only passive investment tools, but also channels for international capital allocation rights. Whoever can be included in the index will have access to liquidity, and BlackRock has become the maker and referee of this global capital game. According to official disclosures, iShares ETF has reached $3.3 trillion in assets and manages more than 1,400 ETFs, covering almost all major markets around the world. And through ETFs, BlackRock has gradually infiltrated the shareholder structure of almost every large public company in the United States. According to 2023 data, the Big Three, including BlackRock, is the largest single shareholder of more than 90% of S&P 500 companies, becoming the "invisible hand" in the ownership structure of U.S. companies.

"Revolving Door", the secret weapon of BlackRock's capital 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, with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and AIG 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 become no longer just a player in the market, but a bridge for policy enforcement. In 2020, when the pandemic caused global markets to plummet again, the Federal Reserve once again brought in this "old friend" and intervened directly in the market through ETFs for the first time in history, and it was BlackRock's iShares family of funds that carried out this action, a move that was also considered by critics to be "too close" to the U.S. government. It can be said that BlackRock is both a private giant in the market and a trusted policy enforcement tool for the government.

Behind this lies a more hidden system: the political-business revolving door.

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

Today's BlackRock tentacles are no longer limited to the financial sector. In recent years, it has continued to deploy major economic arteries such as energy, data, healthcare, logistics and even ports. Recently, BlackRock also proposed to acquire 43 port projects of Li Ka-shing's Yangtze River Hutchison for $22.8 billion, which, if completed, will become one of the de facto controllers of the world's largest port network, involving more than 100 key nodes, and will have a more far-reaching influence on the operation of the global economy. According to the Wall Street Journal, such deals are even tacitly approved or even supported by the U.S. government. In other words, BlackRock is not only a market participant, but also an enforcer of the power game between the great powers.

The story of BlackRock is not just a successful example on Wall Street, but a real-life textbook on how capital permeates power, shapes market rules, and influences the future in the era of globalization. It does not create news, but creates rules; it does not directly govern, but influences fiscal policy; it does not own companies, but 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 spoke bluntly in his 2025 27-page annual letter to investors, 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 income 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 Dollar's Global Status, Tokenization Is the Financial Highway of the Future)

In the on-chain world, BlackRock is attempting 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 are not limited to "how much assets to invest" but rather whether it can set the rules of the game for the next generation of finance.