Financial Giant BlackRock Announces Partnership With Coinbase to Provider Crypto Access to Institutional Players

World’s largest asset manager BlackRock has finally put its first step in the crypto space. On Thursday, August 4, BlackRock announced its partnership with crypto exchange Coinbase in order to provider crypto exposure to its institutional clients.

The tables have completely turned for BlackRock as five years ago BlackRock Chairperson Larry Fink called Bitcoin an “index of money laundering”. As part of the recent deal, BlackRock’s investment management platform Aladdin will integrate with Coinbase Prime.

Via Coinbase, Alladin will facilitate its clients access to crypto trading, prime brokerage, crypto custody, and reporting capabilities for institutional investors. BlackRocks’ Aladdin serves more than 200 institutional users, including insurers, corporations, pensions, asset managers, official financial institutions, and banks.

As per the announcement by Coinbase, Bitcoin (BTC) shall be the first cryptocurrency offered through this partnership. Joseph Chalom, Global Head of Strategic Ecosystem Partnerships at BlackRock said:

Our institutional clients are increasingly interested in gaining exposure to digital asset markets and are focused on how to efficiently manage the operational lifecycle of these assets. This connectivity with Aladdin will allow clients to manage their bitcoin exposures directly in their existing portfolio management and trading workflows for a whole portfolio view of risk across asset classes.”

Coinbase said that it will continue to work with BlackRock on platform integration and will unveil this functionality in a phased manner to interested clients. The news could give a huge institutional push to the crypto market as BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager with over $10 trillion in assets under manager.

Even a tiny portion of this flowing into Bitcoin could propel the BTC to new highs. In recent years, BlackRock has been moving closer to crypto and Bitcoin. The asset manager included Bitcoin futures into some of its products and services.

Earlier this year in March 2022, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink wrote a letter to shareholders wherein he noted that the company was investigating digital currencies, stablecoins and the underlying technologies.”

Soon after the news on Thursday, Coinbase shares shot up significantly by more than 30%. As of press time, the COIN shares at trading 6% up at a price of $93.99. The COIn stock has faced severe correction as the crypto markets crashed through 2022. The Coinbase stock is still trading at 62% discount year-to-date.