After resisting for a long time, the world's largest asset manager has finally taken the plunge into the world's newest asset class. BlackRock, which oversees $10 trillion in assets, is partnering with a publicly traded company to give its clients access tocryptocurrencies.
According to a post on the website of the most popular exchange in the U.S., it is the first digital asset to be offered through the partnerships. The Aladdin investment management platform will allow users to connect to the Coinbase Prime platform.
Aladdin and Coinbase's common clients will be able to manage their bitcoin exposure alongside their public and private investments for a whole-portfolio view of risk.
It's a big shift for the company, which five years ago called the digital currency an index of money-laundering. The asset management firm introduced a couple of funds last year and made small improvements to its platform. In a letter to shareholders in March this year, Fink said that the firm was studying digital currencies, stable coins and the underlying technologies to see how they could help it.
The company says it has over 12,000 institutional clients using its tools. It's not clear when the companies will add other cryptocurrencies to the platform.
The day is a big one for the company. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, announced today that his company has added an integration with Coinbase's wallet, among other third-partycryptocurrencies, to the instagram platform. The company's stock is up over 70% in the past month, demonstrating that the company has begun to recover from the lows it reached in May as the market went through a rough patch.
The exchange announced a hiring freeze and layoffs this summer, which accounted for 18% of its employee base. In the past few months, its competitors have had differing responses to the "crypto winter".
As Coinbase falters, Binance.US is waiting in the wings
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