TradFi Giant BlackRock Pulls Ahead Of Grayscale To Be The World’s Largest Crypto Fund Manager

As institutional adoption grows, a Wall Street giant has taken the crown for the world’s largest digital asset manager from a crypto-native company.

BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have overtaken Grayscale’s offerings for the first time to become the largest crypto-focused publicly listed funds in terms of assets under management (AUM).

BlackRock: The New King In The Land Of Crypto ETFs

BlackRock is now ahead of Grayscale in terms of ETF holdings.

According to data from on-chain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence, BlackRock’s ETF is currently top of the table with $21,217,107,987 assets under management (AUM) as of Friday, while Grayscale held $21,202,480,698 across its ETFs. This marks a considerable difference of nearly $15 million between the two giant asset managers.

On-chain holdings indicate that BlackRock’s BTC ETF, IBIT, and ETH ETF, ETHA, surpassed Grayscale’s GBTC, ETHE, and even the firm’s scaled-down “mini” versions of its ETF.

BLACKROCK ETF HOLDINGS OVERTAKE GRAYSCALE FOR THE FIRST TIME

BlackRock’s ETFs IBIT and ETHA have just overtaken Grayscale’s ETFs GBTC, BTC Mini, ETHE and ETH Mini in on-chain holdings.

Blackrock ETFs now have the largest collective holdings of any provider.

BlackRock ETF… pic.twitter.com/PB41LEGc97

— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) August 16, 2024

With this new development, the Larry Fink-helmed company has the largest collective holding of any crypto ETF provider on the market. The milestone achievement follows the top asset manager recently surpassing the $20 billion net inflows milestone — an indication that BlackRock has posted more investment than all the ETFs launched in 2024.

Meanwhile, Grayscale’s GBTC has bled $19.57 billion worth of BTC since the trust was converted into a spot BTC ETF in January.

As we reported previously, the Bitcoin ETFs, led by BlackRock’s trailblazing IBIT, are on track to collectively become the largest holders of the preeminent cryptocurrency, beating none other than the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto.

According to CoinGecko data, Bitcoin is up 2.6% on the day to $59,406.

BlackRock’s Reluctance To Embrace Altcoins Beyond ETH

Despite the stellar performance of its IBIT and ETHA, BlackRock is keeping off other altcoins such as Ripple’s XRP and Solana (SOL).

As reported by ZyCrypto, Samara Cohen, BlackRock’s chief investment officer for ETF and index investments, said Bitcoin and Ethereum will be the only two cryptos traded by the firm’s investors via ETFs in the near future. Prior to that, Robert Mitchnick, the head of digital assets at BlackRock, revealed that there was virtually no demand for other altcoins among the asset manager’s clients.

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