• The Breakdown
  • Posts
  • Larry Fink's Forecast: Tokenizing Financial Assets, with Bitcoin Leading The Way

Larry Fink's Forecast: Tokenizing Financial Assets, with Bitcoin Leading The Way

Plus Record Inflows into Bitcoin ETFs

Author

Nathaniel Whittemore
January 16, 2024

The Breakdown First Five - Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Welcome back to The Breakdown First Five — the 5 most interesting and/or important stories in bitcoin, crypto, and markets to start your day.

tokenization of financial assets, with a creative emphasis on Bitcoin's role in this transformation

5. Coin Center: “We have no obligation to answer”

Coin Center has rejected Senator Warren’s demand for answers, accusing her of attempting to chill free speech and the right to petition the government. Warren asked for information on lobbyist payments to national security and law enforcement experts. Coin Center said she had overstepped her bounds, urging Warren to respect “long standing norms of civility, respectful debate and compromise.”

4. Kwontradiction

Do Kwon’s has simultaneously consented to extradition and is fighting it until the end, depending on which legal team you ask. In Montenegro, Kwon’s lawyers have said they are appealing the extradition, which they claim “drastically violates the provisions of the law”. In New York, the Terraform Labs legal team says their trial should be delayed until March to allow Kwon to appear after his “imminent” extradition. So, which is it?    

3. UN Warns on Tether Use

The United Nations have warned that Tether has become the currency of choice for illicit markets in South East Asia. Romance scams and illegal casinos are the key focus, with the UN suggesting that a cottage, Tether-based banking industry now surrounds the illicit activity. Tether pointed to their law enforcement cooperation and the transparency of the blockchain, implying that it really isn’t their job to unilaterally crack down on regional crime syndicates. 

2. Inflows are In

Frenzied trading over the first two days of Bitcoin ETFs produced record weekly volume and $1.18B worth of global net inflows to Bitcoin products according to Coinshares. The new ETFs attracted almost $1.5B in inflows with GBTC recording $580M worth of outflows, very mild compared to some estimates. Last week had the second highest inflows to Bitcoin funds, falling short of the launch of Futures ETFs in October 2021.  

1. Fink Wants to Tokenize The World

Embarking on a media tour after the successful ETF launch, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink said that Bitcoin was just a stepping stone in the “tokenization of every financial asset.” He spoke positively about Bitcoin, calling it “an asset class that protects you.” Fink also said that he sees value in a spot Ethereum ETF, but was limited in his comments. 

Thanks for reading -NLW