Is Larry Fink High? BlackRock CEO Sells Bitcoin Fantasy
Is Larry Fink high?
It’s a fair question to ask.
The BlackRock CEO recently suggested that Bitcoin — the notoriously volatile, slow, and inefficient digital asset — could replace the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. He wasn’t joking. As America’s national debt continues to rise, global confidence in the dollar may eventually diminish, allowing a decentralized alternative like Bitcoin to take its place. At least, that’s what Fink’s suggestion implies.
Such a statement is, at best, a wild fantasy. Moreover, it comes from a man whose company, BlackRock, has established itself as a central player in the very ecosystem it is now attempting to reframe as the antidote to global financial decay. (RELATED: BlackRock and American Airlines: Is Larry Fink the New Sam Bankman-Fried?)
In other words, Fink isn’t a neutral observer. BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF — approved in January 2024 — is now the largest in the U.S., managing over $47 billion in assets.
An ETF (exchange-traded fund) is a way for investors to buy into an asset like Bitcoin without ever having to deal with the asset itself. There are no wallets, passwords, or understanding of how it works. Just one click, and you’re in.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority recently gave BlackRock the green light to expand into European crypto markets. If Bitcoin were to become the world’s reserve currency, BlackRock wouldn’t just benefit. It would, in many ways, own the infrastructure.
Fink’s shrewd, somewhat shameless salesmanship demands some scrutiny.
Let’s remove our tinfoil hats and imagine, for a moment, a world where Bitcoin becomes the reserve currency. What, one wonders, would that look like?
It certainly wouldn’t be a world of greater transparency or decentralization. It would be a world dominated by a handful of uber-wealthy whales and institutional players — BlackRock among them — who already control vast portions of the supply. Bitcoin’s fixed cap of 21 million coins doesn’t democratize value. It ossifies it. It rewards those who got in early, punishes latecomers, and centralizes power under the guise of decentralization. In other words, it’s a game designed for, and largely controlled by, the elite of elites.
Bitcoin’s Institutional Capture Risk
Earlier this month, Jack Dorsey, one of Bitcoin’s earliest and most vocal champions, warned that Bitcoin is in serious danger of institutional capture. What was supposed to be a revolution by the people, for the people, is now being swallowed up by Wall Street and its allies. Dorsey’s warning wasn’t hypothetical; it’s already happening. And BlackRock is leading the charge.
But leading the charge to where, exactly?
Bitcoin has existed since 2009. Yet, even today, trying to purchase something as simple as a cup of coffee with it is often clunky, expensive, or entirely impractical. Most businesses don’t accept it. Most people don’t use it. In real life, Bitcoin remains closer to a speculative asset than a functional currency. The idea that it’s ready to take over global commerce is rather absurd.
Bitcoin is slow. Its transaction capacity is only a fraction of what’s necessary to support global trade. Settling one block takes about ten minutes, while Visa can process tens of thousands of transactions per second. Although Bitcoin’s layer-two solutions, like the Lightning Network, have enhanced speeds, they remain largely untested at scale — and still depend on trust mechanisms that undermine the very decentralization they promise.
There’s also the issue of volcanic-like volatility. Reserve currencies must be stable. Predictable. They must be anchors, not rollercoasters. Bitcoin, however, can drop 15 percent in a single day if Elon Musk or another influential figure tweets something ambiguous. The idea that nations would align their energy, food supplies, or defense systems with such an erratic asset is completely naive.
And yet, here we are, living in a world where the man who runs the largest asset manager on the planet is earnestly entertaining the idea — not because it’s plausible, but because it’s profitable.
Fink is many things, but he’s certainly not stupid. He knows Bitcoin won’t replace the dollar. However, the narrative of Bitcoin as a counterweight to fiscal irresponsibility is good for business. It stokes FOMO. It signals to institutional investors that they, too, can get in on the “anti-establishment” gold rush, without ever leaving the comfort of regulation or Wall Street.
It’s marketing masquerading as monetary theory. And it’s working.
Fink’s very public musings about Bitcoin becoming the world’s reserve currency aren’t about genuine belief in the death of the dollar. They’re about selling scarcity with a story, creating the illusion of inevitability so the cash keeps flowing into his product.
The man managing more money than most countries isn’t betting on Bitcoin replacing the dollar — he’s betting on you believing it might. That belief powers the ETF. That ETF rakes in fees. And those fees don’t go to Bitcoin maximalists. They go to BlackRock.
The danger here isn’t that Fink is wrong. It’s that people might believe he’s right.
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