Blackrock’s customers see Bitcoin as a “potential” high-priority Crypto

According to the company's head of digital assets, Robert Michnick, Bitcoin is the number one choice of crypto investment among BlackRock customers who are not interested in other coins.

The representative's words are sobering for the blockchain industry, where much of the world's largest asset manager has given up hope that the broader crypto asset class will take over into the traditional financial world.

BlackRock clients like Bitcoin

According to Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terrett, Michnick said bitcoin is “overwhelmingly the number one” for BlackRock's client base.

“And then a little bit of Ethereum, and everything is very little,” Michnik added at Friday's Bitcoin Investor Day conference – a gathering of institutional investors interested in Bitcoin.

Acknowledging the crypto community's desire for BlackRock to accept other tokens, he said, “That's not where we're focused.”

BlackRock launched its US Bitcoin Spot ETF on January 11, along with nine other providers. Since that date, iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has become the most successful yet, absorbing $13.3 billion in revenue and making itself the most successful ETF launch in history. .

When asked about his role on Wall Street in ten years, Michnick said,

“Ultimately, we expect that there will be a convergence where the best of the old system and the new technology in finance will be integrated into a new infrastructure system.”

Wall Street thoughts on Ethereum

The asset manager has filed to launch an Ethereum (ETH) spot ETF, following rivals such as Grayscale and Fidelity. However, the lack of communication with their applications from regulators and a recent investigation into the Ethereum Foundation has analysts predicting that the application will not be approved anytime soon.

Even if approved, experts doubt Ethereum ETFs will gain as much traction as their Bitcoin-based counterparts.

“It's such small potatoes with spot bitcoin ETFs,” Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said on the matter earlier this month. “After the title comes the opening act.”

A Bitwise survey published in January found that 71% of investment advisors prefer Bitcoin over Ethereum.

That said, BlackRock has taken a strong interest in real-world assets on the blockchain, with plans to launch an institutionally focused tokenized asset fund in partnership with Securitize.