After a surprising twist in which the cryptocurrency community saw the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock (NYSE: BLK), file for a spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF), the public has learned about its impressive record of ETF approvals.
As it happens, BlackRock’s record of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approving its ETFs is 575-1, which Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas says was “another reason this is so big, they don’t play around,” in a tweet published on June 16.
Fun fact: BlackRock's record of getting ETFs approved by the SEC is 575-1. That's another reason this is so big, they don't play around. https://t.co/f7YIhGRmLf
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) June 16, 2023
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In other words, the regulatory watchdog had already approved 575 BlackRock’s ETFs, denying only one – in October 2014, when the company sought permission to create actively managed ETFs that would not require disclosures of holdings on a daily basis.
Meanwhile, the recent move arrives at an unfavorable time for cryptocurrencies in the US, as the SEC has filed multiple lawsuits against major businesses in the crypto sphere. Interestingly, the custodian for the planned Bitcoin trust is none other than Coinbase, the crypto exchange currently under the SEC’s offensive.
Implications of success
As Balchunas noted earlier, this filing was a shock because “there’s been no signs at all SEC [was] willing to approve, but BlackRock is very connected, so maybe they know something,” and that it “could be [a] big win for ARK who has live spot filing that’s ahead of them in line.”
With his latter observation, he was referring to the third application attempt for a spot Bitcoin ETF by global asset management firm ARK Invest alongside investment firm 21Shares, after the SEC rejected them two times previously – in March 2022 and January 2023.
Back in March, Finbold reported on BlackRock’s chairman and CEO Larry Fink expressing interest in the crypto sector and stating that his company was actively exploring “the digital assets ecosystem and tokenization of stocks and bonds,” citing the popularity of assets like Bitcoin in emerging markets.
