BlackRock exec: Confusion around bitcoin narrative remains

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As we try to make sense of bitcoin price movements, sometimes there isn’t logic to be found — a tension that gives certain investors pause when mulling exposure. 

That was BlackRock Digital Assets Head Robbie Mitchnick’s take during yesterday’s Blockworks roundtable . 

Bitcoin fundamentally looks like digital gold, given its global, scarce properties. “But then some days it doesn’t trade like that,” Mitchnick said, adding that some of BlackRock’s institutional clients have a hard time with this discrepancy.

“It seems like it should be this, but tariffs got announced and it went down like equities, and that’s confusing to me because I don’t understand why tariffs impact [bitcoin],” he noted. “And the answer is they don’t.” 

He went on: “The market has sort of pre-programmed this idea that you should trade bitcoin like a risk-on asset, despite the fact that [this approach] doesn’t make any sense based on fundamentals. And so that can become, at least in the short-term, somewhat reflexive and self-fulfilling.”

Bitcoin’s gold-like properties would seem to make it appealing in 2025, Mitchnick said. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has previously said crypto could play a “flight to quality” role.

But as gold hit a record high Thursday, bitcoin price is roughly 26% off the peak it hit in January. Blockworks’ Byron Gilliam has previously questioned why bitcoin often isn’t viewed as a risk-off asset.

Big fund groups offering crypto ETFs (like BlackRock) do a lot of work educating clients on the investment thesis behind assets like BTC and ETH. 

But beyond being told, investors might just have to experience it for themselves over time.

Aside from bitcoin’s dip alongside equities amid tariff developments, Mitchnick argued there was “no fundamental basis” for bitcoin’s “nosedive” last summer during the Japanese yen carry trade unwind . BTC price would double five or so months later.

“When you see more episodes where, short-term, [bitcoin behaves] a certain way that seems counter-logical, but then medium-term and long-term it behaves more like you’d expect — consistent with its history — then people start to train themselves to ignore that short-term noise,” Mitchnick said. 

That noise, he added, “is more driven by leveraged speculators and hot-money traders and not really thoughtful, long-term, buy-and-hold investors.”

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