BlackRock joins ranks of US bitcoin ETF hopefuls

BlackRock filed paperwork with the SEC for a spot bitcoin ETF on Thursday amid turbulent conditions for cryptocurrencies

article-image

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink | Source: World Economic Forum (CC license)

share

The world’s largest asset manager is angling to do something scores of its competitors have tried, and failed, to do: launch a spot bitcoin product in the US.

BlackRock, which managed $9.1 trillion in assets through March, outlined plans for its iShares Bitcoin Trust in a Thursday SEC filing.

Coinbase would serve as custodian of the trust’s bitcoin holdings, pending SEC approval of the product. The SEC sued the crypto exchange last week for allegedly operating as an unregistered exchange — a charge the company has denied.

BlackRock partnered with Coinbase last August, connecting the fund group’s investment platform, Aladdin, with Coinbase Prime — extending crypto trading, custody, prime brokerage and reporting capabilities to BlackRock clients. 

The planned product would use a bitcoin reference rate from CF Benchmarks, a Kraken subsidiary that collects price data from exchanges to consistently track spot pricing.

“An estimated 20% of Americans have now owned bitcoin at some point,” CF Benchmarks CEO Sui Chung said in a statement. “BlackRock’s proposed ETF potentially offers the other 80% an option that is altogether more familiar and accessible.”

Fund issuers have tried for years to launch spot bitcoin ETFs in the US, to no avail.  

Though regulators in other countries have greenlit products that invest in bitcoin (BTC) directly, the SEC has cited concerns around market manipulation among its reasons for blocking them. 

The regulator has permitted ETFs that invest in bitcoin futures contracts to come to market.

Grayscale Investments, which sued the SEC last year after it blocked the company’s efforts to convert its flagship Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) to an ETF has noted that those approvals, in part, make the regulator’s rejection of a spot bitcoin ETF “arbitrary and capricious.”

David Hirsch, chief of the crypto asset and cyber unit within the SEC’s division of enforcement, said at a conference on Wednesday that prospective spot bitcoin ETF issuers have not established that there is “an adequate system of surveillance” comparable to trading on a registered exchange.  

Prior to its link-up with Coinbase, BlackRock launched its iShares and Blockchain Tech ETF (IBLC) in April 2022. 

IBLC’s assets under management sit at a scant $7 million after more than a year on the market — despite the fund being up 75% year to date.  

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has also expressed bullishness in crypto’s underlying tech over the past year, saying during a New York Times summit last November that tokenizing securities is “the next generation for markets.”

Updated June 15, 2023 at 5:40 pm ET: Added comment from CF Benchmarks CEO. Added details on the product’s bitcoin reference rate and Coinbase’s SEC lawsuit.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

The House on Thursday passed the CLARITY Act, a landmark cryptocurrency market structure bill

article-image

Interchain Labs will focus on sovereign L1s and institutional demand, abandoning plans for smart contracts on the Cosmos Hub

article-image

Also, only three tokens have outperformed bitcoin so far this year: XMR, HYPE and SKY

article-image

The fund group has submitted proposals in recent months for other funds that would hold litecoin, solana, XRP, HBAR, Sui and others

article-image

Momentum’s back — BTC leads, risk assets follow

article-image

Ondo Finance’s acquisition of blockchain development company Strangelove follows its buy of Oasis Pro