In January SEC filings, investment firm BlackRock indicated it could add Bitcoin futures to its funds down the road.
Turns it, it already has. In new SEC filings from today, the BlackRock Global Allocation Fund indicated that it held 37 futures contracts from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange worth nearly $360,458. The amount represented 0.0014% of the fund's total assets. The contracts expired on March 26.
With nearly $9 trillion in assets under management, BlackRock is the biggest investment management company in the world, ahead of Vanguard, UBS, Fidelity, JPMorgan Chase, and BNY Mellon.
Fidelity last week filed paperwork for a Bitcoin ETF, BNY Mellon commented in February that it would add Bitcoin custody services, and JPMorgan Chase is creating a cryptocurrency basket so investors can buy shares in companies exposed to Bitcoin.
BlackRock is the biggest domino to fall. As recently as 2018, CEO Larry Fink believed the firm's clients weren't interested in crypto exposure. “Right now I can tell you, worldwide, I have not from one client who said ‘I need to be in this,’” he told Bloomberg.
Bitcoin isn't the same thing as a futures contract. The latter is just a bet on the price of the former without the need to actually purchase. In fact, CME futures contracts are settled in cash, not tokens. But, with the company also announcing in December that it was searching for a VP of Blockchain with experience in valuation of digital assets, actual Bitcoin purchases could be in store for BlackRock.