BlackRock CEO Larry Fink Describes Digital Assets’ Advancement In Annual Shareholder Letter

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Bil­lion­aire Lar­ry Fink has been keep­ing an eye on the advance­ment of dig­i­tal assets, accord­ing to his recent share­hold­er letter.

In an annu­al share­hold­er let­ter sent by Black­Rock CEO Lar­ry Fink, Fink described how the dig­i­tal assets indus­try has wit­nessed “very inter­est­ing developments.”

Specif­i­cal­ly, Fink high­lights the growth of Bit­coin and cryp­tocur­ren­cy usage in India, Brazil and parts of Africa. He describes how “dra­mat­ic advances in dig­i­tal pay­ments” are “bring­ing down costs and advanc­ing finan­cial inclusion.” 

Bit­coin Mag­a­zine has close­ly fol­lowed these advance­ments in Bit­coin adop­tion, such as the growth in bit­coin trans­ac­tions in India, the Bit­coin Beach Brazil project, Bit­coin Ekasi in South Africa and many more, all clear exam­ples of increas­ing usage in coun­tries where sov­er­eign dig­i­tal mon­ey is need­ed most. 

Fink goes on to note that devel­oped mar­kets like the Unit­ed States are lag­ging behind in com­par­i­son, leav­ing the cost of pay­ments high­er, in what may be a reflec­tion on the Unit­ed States’ own recent actions of crack­ing down on large exchanges. In addi­tion, the col­lapse of the banks which pro­vid­ed finan­cial ser­vices to these exchanges has fur­ther sti­fled the industry. 

“In par­tic­u­lar, the tok­eniza­tion of asset class­es offers the prospect of dri­ving effi­cien­cies in cap­i­tal mar­kets, short­en­ing val­ue chains, and improv­ing cost and access for investors,” Fink writes. “At Black­Rock we con­tin­ue to explore the dig­i­tal assets ecosys­tem, espe­cial­ly areas most rel­e­vant to our clients such as per­mis­sioned blockchains and tok­eniza­tion of stocks and bonds.” Although he is dis­cussing the tok­eniza­tion of exist­ing assets, it is curi­ous to con­sid­er whether Black­Rock and sim­i­lar­ly large finan­cial insti­tu­tions will see through the veil of the government’s response to the recent bank col­laps­es, and con­sid­er the pri­ma­ry use case of blockchain tech­nol­o­gy to be the tok­eniza­tion of sound mon­ey.

This, after all, was its first use case — in the form of Bitcoin.

“While the indus­try is matur­ing, there are clear­ly ele­vat­ed risks and a need for reg­u­la­tion in this mar­ket,” Fink con­cludes. “Black­Rock is com­mit­ted to oper­a­tional excel­lence, and we plan to apply the same stan­dards and con­trols to dig­i­tal assets that we do across our business.”

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