BlackRock reached its highest value of assets under management (AUM) just six months after the explosive launch of its iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) in January.
As of June 30, the financial giant held $10.65 trillion across its entire platform, up 13% year over year, according to its Q2 earnings report published on Monday. That’s well above its $10.2 trillion estimate for the second quarter, during which it hauled $51 billion in new client cash to its long term investment funds.
“Organic growth was driven by private markets, retail active fixed income, and surging flows into our ETFs, which had their best start to a year on record,” said BlackRock CEO Larry Fink in a statement, per Bloomberg. The firm’s total net flows in Q2 totaled $82 billion, making for $139 billion in net flows for the first half of the year.
The performance surge represents a rebound for BlackRock and other money managers whose stocks and other assets plummeted in value as the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates in 2022 and 2023.
Now, with markets predicting that interest rates will start falling again in September, investors are moving capital back into fixed-income, and away from money-market funds where they won’t earn the same yield once rates drop.
That’s also potentially good news for Bitcoin (BTC)—an asset whose price is historically reacted to monetary policy changes much like stocks.
BlackRock’s IBIT
After launching IBIT at the start of the year, BlackRock has become the owner of the largest Bitcoin spot ETF in the world, which holds $18.3 billion worth of Bitcoin in its coffers as of Friday. At the end of Q1, IBIT’s flows totaled $13.9 billion, implying that net flows to the fund have climbed $4.4 billion—despite Bitcoin’s price declining significantly since that time.
Vanguard Group—BlackRock’s largest competitor—held $8.6 trillion in assets under management as of December 31, 2023, according to its website.
Unlike BlackRock, Fidelity, and other major asset managers, Vanguard chose not to launch or provide investors a platform for any Bitcoin spot ETFs for philosophical reasons.
As of last week, Vanguard’s new CEO Salim Ramij began spearheading the company—after previously helping BlackRock launch its Bitcoin ETF.
Edited by Stephen Graves
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The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.