Author: Nancy, PANews
A news about "BlackRock's IBIT inflows exceeding the world's largest gold fund this year" coincided with Bitcoin returning to $100,000 on May 8th, becoming the market's focus.
Bitcoin ETF has taken over the crypto community, making Wall Street an important Bitcoin buyer, driving this once-marginal asset towards mainstreaming and compliance, and becoming a key piece of BlackRock's global financial landscape.
BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company, manages assets worth up to $11.5 trillion. However, this "seemingly asset management giant" has long been more than just an asset manager. Dubbed the "shadow central bank", BlackRock deeply participates in defining global capital flows, shaping policy directions, and constructing systemic financial instruments.
From IBIT to BUIDL, BlackRock's Blockchain Layout
In the traditional financial order, BlackRock has long been a player controlling the game rules. Now, this financial behemoth is quietly building a value bridge between traditional capital and digital assets, attempting to reconstruct the future financial order.
Over the past decade, one of the unresolved core issues in the crypto market was "when will the US SEC approve a Bitcoin spot ETF". Dozens of institutions have tried and failed. Until June 2023, BlackRock officially submitted a Bitcoin spot ETF application, which was not just a document, but a catalyst for market confidence. The market quickly realized: when even BlackRock takes a stance on Bitcoin, regulatory approval is just a matter of time.
In January 2024, the SEC officially approved multiple Bitcoin spot ETFs, including BlackRock's IBIT. This event was not only a "watershed moment for Bitcoin's compliance" but also meant a redistribution of narrative rights: BlackRock introduced Bitcoin to the mainstream financial stage with a single ETF.
After launching, IBIT quickly attracted massive institutional funds, not only ending Grayscale GBTC's monopoly on Bitcoin exposure but also surpassing the world's largest gold ETF GLD in capital inflows.
According to public data, from the beginning of the year to now, IBIT has gained approximately $6.97 billion in net inflows, exceeding GLD's $6.29 billion in the same period. Despite Bitcoin's price increase of only 1.4% and gold rising 24.9%, funds have been flowing into IBIT, showing high market recognition of its long-term allocation value.
Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas pointed out that continuous fund inflow during a weak price phase confirms Bitcoin's asset allocation value as "digital gold", predicting BTC ETF size will reach three times that of gold ETF in 3-5 years. Strategy Chairman Michael Saylor even boldly predicted that BlackRock's IBIT will become the world's largest ETF within ten years.
However, IBIT is just the starting point in BlackRock's larger picture. Rather than promoting an ETF, it is reshaping a new financial infrastructure centered on tokenization.
In March 2024, BlackRock launched the tokenized money market fund BUIDL, becoming its first fully on-chain traditional asset fund. By May 2025, BUIDL's TVL has exceeded $2.8 billion, firmly leading the global RWA track, far ahead of competitors like WisdomTree and Franklin Templeton. This means BUIDL is no longer an experimental project, but a validated real-world path.
Furthermore, BlackRock recently applied to establish DLT Shares and announced the on-chain mapping of $150 billion in assets, covering diverse areas like real estate trusts and commodities. This case not only marks the commercialization and scaling of RWA but also moves on-chain finance from marginal experimentation to an extension of traditional capital markets.
The Comeback of a Wall Street Disappointment
Perhaps everything began in an office in Manhattan in 1986.
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"Revolving Door": BlackRock's Secret Weapon
What truly brought BlackRock into the global public eye was its role as a "behind-the-scenes central bank" during various financial crises. Especially during the 2008 global financial crisis, with Lehman Brothers' collapse and AIG on the brink of bankruptcy, the entire financial system was in critical danger. The US Treasury and Federal Reserve urgently needed an external professional institution that understood asset pricing and could manage liquidation. BlackRock took on this hot potato, not only helping to clear toxic assets but also assisting the Federal Reserve in designing the largest asset rescue plan in history, TARP.
Since then, BlackRock's role has transformed from a mere market player to a bridge for policy implementation. During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, which again caused global market crashes, the Federal Reserve once more called upon this "old friend" and, unprecedented at the time, directly intervened in the market through ETFs, with BlackRock's iShares fund series executing this action. Critics viewed this as BlackRock having an "overly intimate" relationship with the US government. It can be said that BlackRock is both a private market giant and a trusted policy execution tool for the government.
Behind this lies an even more secretive system: the political-commercial revolving door.
In the past, many of BlackRock's senior management personnel would enter government agencies like the US Treasury and Federal Reserve after leaving, while some former government officials would join BlackRock after leaving their positions. This intertwining of political and commercial relationships often means having a pre-emptive advantage under information asymmetry, providing BlackRock with a unique advantage in its global strategic layout.
BlackRock's reach is no longer limited to the financial sector. In recent years, it has continuously deployed in energy, data, healthcare, logistics, and even ports - various economic arteries. Recently, BlackRock proposed to acquire 43 port projects from Li Ka-shing's Hutchison for $22.8 billion. If the transaction is completed, BlackRock will become one of the actual controllers of the world's largest port network, involving over 100 key nodes, and will have a far-reaching impact on global economic operations. According to the Wall Street Journal, such transactions have even received tacit approval or support from the US government. In other words, BlackRock is no longer just a market participant, but an executor in great power competition.
BlackRock's story is not just a successful example on Wall Street, but a real-world textbook of how capital penetrates power, shapes market rules, and influences the future in the globalization era. It doesn't create news, but creates rules; it doesn't directly govern, but influences fiscal policies; it doesn't own companies, yet is the largest shareholder behind almost all companies. This invisible giant has long permeated every corner of our lives.
Due to its high sensitivity to global financial dynamics and systemic influence, BlackRock was the first to perceive the structural transformation triggered by crypto assets. "If the United States cannot control its continuously expanding debt and fiscal deficit, the US dollar's status as a 'global reserve currency' maintained for decades may ultimately give way to emerging digital assets like Bitcoin," BlackRock CEO Larry Fink candidly stated in his 27-page annual letter to investors in 2025, mentioning that tokenization is becoming a key force in reshaping financial infrastructure. If SWIFT is postal service, tokenization is email itself - assets can circulate directly and in real-time, bypassing all intermediaries. Tokenization will make investment and returns more "democratized". This may not be a bold imagination, but a calm judgment of future financial sovereignty.
In the on-chain world, what BlackRock seeks to dominate is not just liquidity, but also standard setting, infrastructure construction, and regulatory alignment. As history has always shown, BlackRock's intent has never been just about "how many assets to invest in", but about whether it can establish the game rules for the next generation of finance.
