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In his 2026 annual shareholder letter, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink laid out an ambitious outlook for the firm’s presence in digital assets, forecasting that BlackRock’s crypto business — and the broader market — could be generating roughly $500 million in annual revenue within the next five years.
Tokenization Will ‘Update The Plumbing’ Of Finance
As reported by Forbes, BlackRock has positioned itself as a market leader in Bitcoin (BTC), handling about 800,000 BTC worth approximately $55 billion for its clients through its iShares Bitcoin Trust exchange-traded fund (ETF).
Beyond Bitcoin exposure, BlackRock has expanded into tokenized funds: its USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, known as BUIDL, became the world’s largest tokenized fund last year after surpassing $2 billion in assets under management (AuM).
Fink singled out tokenized products and stablecoin operations as major pillars of the firm’s strategy, disclosing that BlackRock manages $65 billion of stablecoin reserves and nearly $80 billion of digital-asset exchange-traded products (ETPs).
Those figures, the executive said, reflect how BlackRock has moved quickly to establish institutional-quality offerings in the digital markets.
Additionally, the CEO argued that tokenization has the potential to “update the plumbing of the financial system,” broadening access to investments in the same way the internet expanded commerce in the 1990s.
BlackRock CEO Warns US Risks Losing Crypto Lead
Citing research from Juniper, Fink noted that about half the world’s population already carries a digital wallet on their phone, and suggested that those same wallets could one day be used to invest in diversified portfolios as easily as sending a payment.
Fink painted tokenization as a generational opportunity and warned of strategic risk if the US falls behind. Last year, he urged faster adoption of digitization and tokenization, arguing that other nations could overtake the US if it lags.
At the same time, the BlackRock CEO pushed back on skeptics like Warren Buffett who dub Bitcoin “worthless,” characterizing the asset instead as one that people hold for reasons tied to insecurity.
“You own bitcoin because you’re frightened of your physical security. You own it because you’re frightened of your financial security,” he wrote in its shareholders letter, adding that a longer-term rationale for holding Bitcoin is protection against the debasement of financial assets driven by fiscal deficits.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $69,420, down 2% over the last 24 hours and down 7% over the last seven days, amid a broader market sell-off on Tuesday. This follows last week’s rejection at the $76,000 resistance level, which the cryptocurrency failed to surpass.
Featured image from the Wall Street Journal, chart from TradingView.com
