Bitcoin has been described by different people in various ways.
It has been called scams or similar terms by many. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase has described BTC as a scam. “a pet rock,” Warren Buffett was awarded creativity points when he reportedly said in 2018 that it’s “probably rat poison squared.”
There’s no way to know if square roots can be used on numbers that are not numerals. But there is no doubt that rodents have been killed while creating this metaphor.
What was the topic again? What were we talking about again?
But then there’s another contingent entirely that believes wholeheartedly in bitcoin’s ethos — an asset with a finite supply that can be transacted peer to peer, without financial intermediaries.
Michael Saylor is the MicroStrategy co-founder. The company that he founded, MicroStrategy has purchased 205,000 BTC.
Bitcoins are a way to preserve capital. “digital energy,” Saylor.
In an interview last month with Yahoo Finance, he added: “Bitcoin is the apex property of the human race.”
Saylor is a graduate of MIT, with degrees in astronautics and aeronautics. He has also worked numbers into his description of bitcoin.
“I want you to imagine bitcoin as a city in cyberspace that is 276 blocks wide, 276 blocks high [and] 276 blocks deep — about 21 million blocks,” He said the same thing in an interview. “Now imagine all 8 billion people in the world want to live there one day; they want to put their capital there.
“Wealth in the World is worth $900 Trillion.” Saylor added. “As people migrate from every other form of property…into cyberspace, you’re going to see the bitcoin network go from a $1 trillion network to 10x that to 100x that. There is no other place to be.”
Enter BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.
The leader of the world’s largest asset manager has not touted bitcoin for as long as Saylor. Also unlike the MicroStrategy founder, Fink’s conviction in the asset has not been constant — as he once in 2017 called bitcoin “A list of the most common money laundering methods.”
That tune has changed, with the BlackRock CEO lumping crypto with Treasurys and gold, for example, as a “flight to quality” asset during an interview last October.
“If you live in a place where you are afraid of your own future or of your government, you may also be worried that the government will devalue its currency. [due to] If you don’t have too many deficits then this could be an excellent long-term investment.” Fink more recently told Fox Business in January.
In the same interview, the BlackRock leader called it what many have called it before him: a type of digital gold.
“This is an international ledger.” Fink added. “It’s cross-border. It is larger than any government.”
Influence from different angles
Fink and Saylor are both extremely influential in quickening bitcoin adoption, said CK Zheng, a former head of valuation risk at Credit Suisse who co-founded crypto hedge fund ZX Squared Capital.
But their impacts come from very different perspectives, he added — a bitcoin maximalist versus a fund manager executive looking to “Demonize” the crypto space.
“[Saylor’s] The commitment of Bitcoin is undeniable” Zheng told Blockworks. “His actions speak louder than his words…and his actions are pure and simple: buy and hold forever, through market peaks and troughs.”
Meanwhile, BTC has grown on Fink more recently, if for no other reason than to sell his firm’s nearly three-month-old spot bitcoin ETF.
The asset management giant’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has seen net inflows on every trading day since launching on Jan. 11, according to BitMex Research data — totaling nearly $14 billion as of March 28.
BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF held more than 250,000 BTC at that time — a total that recently surpassed the total holdings of MicroStrategy.
Peter Najarian, a managing partner at RW3 Ventures, spoke at Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit in London last week. He said that Fink’s support for the crypto industry might have had a bigger impact on the approval of the bitcoin ETF. This, he suggested, could be more significant than Grayscale Investments’ legal victory against the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“In today’s environment, many would argue that Larry Fink has more power than the Federal Reserve chairman in the US.” Najarian said.
The better bitcoin salesman?
The rhetoric of Saylor and Fink will be interpreted, and strike a chord with various investors differently.
Saylor’s take on bitcoin resonates with the crypto community but can be somewhat polarizing for traditional investors, said Ryan Rusmussen, a senior crypto research analyst at Bitwise Investments.
The MicroStrategy founder essentially criticized asset diversification during an interview posted on X by Swan Bitcoin, for example.
“Saylor’s view, for example is in direct opposition to the beliefs of traditional investors, who find it difficult to align with.” Rasmussen said.
Saylor also noted in his recent interview with Yahoo Finance: “People that use fiat currency as a store of value — there’s a name for them; we call them poor.”
Such remarks, again, play well to Saylor’s crypto base, but likely don’t sit well with investors outside that realm, the Bitwise research analyst told Blockworks.
Fink meanwhile touches on similar advantages, but in investor speak. The BlackRock CEO has called bitcoin “Asset classes that can protect you” from economic uncertainty and geopolitical risk.
So younger retail investors still forming their opinion on global markets and investing are more likely to be influenced by Saylor, and might not even know what BlackRock is, Rasmussen argued. Fink’s opinions, contrarily, hold particular weight with older, professional investors.
It’s rare and difficult for an established traditional finance executive to adopt such a view on bitcoin at this early adoption stage, Zheng said. Many Wall Street CEOs still have not fully warmed up to crypto, he added.
“BlackRock’s adoption of bitcoin has been accelerated in a fundamental way. [traditional finance] They have become undisputed leaders in the Bitcoin ETF market.” Zheng noted. “As well as the [traditional finance] BlackRock has an impact that is unlimited in the new asset class and grows stronger every day.”
Following demand
While Saylor’s belief in bitcoin has appeared firm and constant in all market environments, Fink’s conviction in bitcoin appears more based on where he sees client demand.
“He has created a path to success for individual and institutional investors through the ETF.” Zheng said of Fink.
The BlackRock CEO said shortly after FTX’s collapse in late 2022 that tokenizing assets on the blockchain is “The next generation of markets”
BlackRock launched its first tokenized fund on the Ethereum Network on March 20. Robert Mitchnick, the firm’s head of digital assets, called the offerings “The latest evolution of our Digital Assets Strategy.”
RW3 Ventures’ Najarian said during the DAS panel that there comes a time when the big players within an industry understand some innovations become too big to ignore.
“At some point the smartest of the incumbents…take the view of…‘The technology’s too good and too innovative,'” Najarian said. “‘The rails are such that they really are disruptive, I’m not going to be able to fight it forever, so now I will lead.’ It was the same thing that happened from our seats with BlackRock, Fidelity, and other companies.”
Asset managers are in the business of gathering assets to manage, and BlackRock’s IBIT is the fastest-growing new ETF of all time.
Seeking out those assets will impact how an executive like Fink speaks about bitcoin.
But the reason Larry Fink can confidently label bitcoin as a “flight to quality” asset alongside US Treasurys and gold is because he can see that many — including BlackRock customers — are already using it that way, Rasmussen said.
He added: “Fink’s new perspective on bitcoin is a combination of BlackRock’s potential business and the changing perception of investors worldwide.”
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