Could Larry Fink’s embrace of crypto finally move the price of bitcoin in a way President Trump’s support hasn’t?
In his annual letter to investors, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink called the tokenization of assets “a revolution in investing,” offering one of his strongest endorsements yet for the future of digital finance.
Fink isn’t just talking about crypto as we know it. He’s calling for the full-scale tokenization of all assets — stocks, bonds, real estate — into digital tokens that can be traded instantly, online.
“Markets wouldn't need to close. Transactions that currently take days would clear in seconds,” he wrote.
“And billions of dollars currently immobilized by settlement delays could be reinvested immediately back into the economy, generating more growth.”
His argument is that the financial system is still running on outdated infrastructure — “plumbing built when trading floors still shouted orders and fax machines felt revolutionary.”
He cites the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), which underpins trillions of dollars in global transactions every day — but operates more like a relay race, with banks passing off transaction instructions one by one.
“That relay approach made sense in the 1970s, an analog era when the markets were much smaller and daily transactions were fewer,” Fink wrote. “But today, relying on SWIFT feels like routing emails through the postal office.”
By contrast, “tokenization is email itself — assets move directly and instantly, sidestepping intermediaries.”
Fink’s stance marks a sharp departure from his earlier views. Back in 2017, he dismissed bitcoin entirely, saying: “Bitcoin just shows you how much demand for money laundering there is in the world. That’s all it is.”
But his tone has shifted. While still cautious, Fink now says decentralized finance is “an extraordinary innovation.”
On flip side, Blackrock warned that this innovation could threaten the U.S. dollar if investors begin to see bitcoin as a safer store of value. To prevent this, Fink urged the U.S. government to reduce spending and rein in national debt.
Wall Street’s support at a rough time
Fink’s endorsement — coming from the CEO of the world’s largest asset manager — lands during a rough stretch for the crypto market.
Bitcoin is down 11.7% year to date. After briefly topping $100,000 following Trump’s election in November, bitcoin has slipped back to around $82,600 as of Thursday.
Trump’s recent moves — including the creation of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile, and a high-profile Crypto Summit at the White House — have so far failed to spark a sustained rally.
And while crypto bills itself as a hedge against the traditional system, it’s been caught in the same downdraft as equities amid Trump’s new tariffs.
“Lacking a strong intrinsic narrative, the asset class remains firmly tethered to macro forces, with its macro beta keeping it closely bound to trade war developments,” Rick Maeda, an analyst at Presto Research, told CoinDesk.
“Structurally, a prolonged trade war could continue to batter crypto as it continues to identify as a risk asset rather than the digital gold it once was.”
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