From Dismissal to Embrace: Wall Street Heavyweights Pivot Towards Crypto
The crypto industry is starting to turn even the biggest players on Wall Street to its side, with BlackRock being one of the biggest examples.
The company’s founder and CEO, Larry Fink, was recorded saying that Bitcoin is “an index of money laundering” back in 2017.
Six years later, in 2023, the chief of the world’s largest asset manager submitted an application for Bitcoin spot ETF with the US SEC.
He then praised Bitcoin, saying that it could revolutionize finance and saying that it is digitizing gold.
Fink is not the only one who seemingly had a change of heart about BTC. Ken Griffin, another billionaire financier, called the crypto sectors a “jihadist call” against the USD as recently as two years ago.
These days, however, Citadel Securities, his electronic trading company, started backing a platform that allows institutional investors to trade digital currencies.
Even Fidelity Investments, the largest 401(k) administrator in the US, is trying to get into crypto on several fronts.
Fidelity allowed workers to start investing a portion of their retirement savings in Bitcoin in 2022, while its subsidiary, Fidelity Digital Assets, started investing in EDX, a new crypto exchange.
Furthermore, Fidelity also filed for a Bitcoin spot ETF less than two weeks after BlackRock.
Initially, the crypto industry players intended to try and break Wall Street and Washington’s grip on the financial system in the US.
Now, however, it appears that the crypto industry is going to assimilate Wall Street and allow it to join its ranks. While this is an impressive move, it also happened while the crypto sector was at its weakest.
It is far down from its peak due to a year-long crypto winter, and the US SEC renewed its efforts to disable the
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