BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, announced on Thursday on its website that it had launched a spot bitcoin private trust for clients.
The trust is available to institutional clients based in the U.S and is intended to track the performance of Bitcoin, “less expenses and liabilities of the trust,” BlackRock said.
“Despite the steep downturn in the digital asset market, we are still seeing substantial interest from some institutional clients in how to efficiently and cost-effectively access these assets using our technology and product capablities,” the announcement said.
The firm also mentioned it has been conducting work in permissioned blockchains, stablecoins, cryptoassets, and tokenisation. The announcement comes shortly after BlackRock announced a partnership with a U.S. based cryptocurrency exchange to provide its clients access to trading digital assets.
Blackrock managed approximately $10 trillion in assets as of January 2022, according to reporting by the Financial Times.