BlackRock CEO Larry Fink spoke on Monday on why he was wrong to be a skeptic on Bitcoin and crypto before properly studying the asset class.

His firm’s newly published Q2 earnings showcased a record $10.65 trillion AUM for the investment manager, in small part thanks to inflows to its Bitcoin ETF product launched in January.

Larry Fink’s Bitcoin Awakening

“As you know… I was a proud skeptic,” said Fink during an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Monday. “I studied it, learned about it, and I came away saying, ok, my opinion five years ago was wrong.”

Back in 2017, Fink referred to Bitcoin as an “index of money laundering,” considering it Bitcoin’s only real use case. SkyBridge Capital co-founder Anthony Scaramucci has claimed he met Fink back in 2021, who still called Bitcoin “stupid” at the time.

Two years later, the entire crypto industry was plagued with lawsuits from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), whose chair holds a view on Bitcoin that mimics Fink’s old perspective to this day. Yet it was only weeks after the SEC filed back-to-back lawsuits against Coinbase and Binance that BlackRock filed for its iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) in June 2023, now the largest Bitcoin ETF in the world.

According to Fink, Bitcoin is a “legitimate financial instrument” that can offer uncorrelated returns – even if its technology can sometimes be used nefariously.

“I believe it is an instrument that you invest in when you’re more frightened,” he continued. That includes when one is fearful that their country is rapidly debasing their currency through excess deficits, which “some countries are,” he said.

Escaping The Financial System

He also claimed it allows holders to invest outside of their government’s control offering them more financial independence.

“I am a major believer that there is a role for Bitcoin in portfolios,” he concluded. “I believe there is a great industrial use for it and I think a lot of people are missing that.”

As of Friday, BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF held $18.3 billion in Bitcoin on behalf of clients, dwarfing the former king Grayscale’s $15.7 billion AUM.

Based on that figure, IBIT has enjoyed $4.4 billion since the end of Q1, despite Bitcoin’s price having fallen ~14% since that time. In total, BlackRock received $82 billion in fresh flows across all asset types in Q2.