World’s Largest Asset Manager BlackRock to Launch Crypto Trading Services (Report)

The world’s largest asset manager plans to double down on its cryptocurrency engagement by launching such trading services, asserted a new report. This comes a year after the company dipped its toes by trading bitcoin and reporting owning stocks of BTC mining companies.

• Citing people familiar with the matter, CoinDesk informed that BlackRock aims to enter the digital asset space with “client support trading and then their own credit facility.”
• This will allow investors to borrow from the asset manager by providing cryptocurrencies as collateral.
• Another source claimed that public pension organizations, endowments, and sovereign wealth funds will have the option to trade cryptocurrencies through BlackRock’s integrated investment management platform – Aladdin (Asset, Liability, Debt, and Derivative Investment Network.)
• The NYC-based behemoth with over $10 trillion in AUM sampled the cryptocurrency industry last year by making a profitable short-term bitcoin trade through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).
• Later on, reports emerged indicating that the firm owned nearly $400 million worth of shares of Bitcoin mining companies.
• In the meantime, the organization’s executives, such as CEO Larry Fink and CIO Rick Rieder, praised bitcoin and some altcoins. Fink even predicted that BTC could become a great asset class and a threat to the US dollar, but it still has to prove itself.