World’s Largest Asset Manager BlackRock Sees ‘Little’ Demand For Ethereum From Clients

The world’s largest asset manager with about $10 trillion of assets under management, Blackrock, is not seeing much demand for the industry’s second-largest crypto by market capitalization, Ethereum (ETH).

BlackRock Prioritizing Bitcoin; Ether, Others Take Backseat

BlackRock’s head of digital assets, Robert Mitchnick, revealed that customers of the Wall Street giant have only “a little bit” of interest in ether compared to Bitcoin (BTC).

“I can say that for our client base, bitcoin is overwhelmingly the number one focus and a little bit Ethereum,” said Mitchnick during a fireside chat at the Friday Bitcoin Investor Day conference in New York.

At the same time, there is “very, very little” demand for other crypto assets, suggesting that BlackRock is not even exploring other altcoins. 

When asked if BlackRock will soon be introducing an exchange-traded fund (ETF) based on one of the hottest Solana meme coins at the moment, dogwifhat (WIF), Mitchnick claimed he didn’t know what it was, indicating that there’s a misconception in the cryptosphere that the Larry Fink-led firm will launch a slew of other services.

BlackRock filed paperwork for a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in June 2023, and it was approved in January. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) has captured some of the largest volumes in the entire ETF market.

Mitchnick postulated that the main reason BlackRock, which was previously skeptical of Bitcoin, decided to introduce a spot BTC ETF was that its clients were consistently voicing their interest in the flagship crypto during both bull and bear markets.

The investment giant is now looking to tokenize financial assets on the Ethereum blockchain. As ZyCrypto reported, the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund will be dubbed “BUIDL.” It will allow eligible investors to earn steady U.S. dollar yields by subscribing to the fund via Securitize Markets.

In November, BlackRock also applied to create an ether spot-based exchange-traded fund. However, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission deferred making a decision on this application earlier this month.