BlackRock Is Preparing for Bitcoin’s Next Move. So Am I.

BlackRock filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week for a new kind of bitcoin fund.

The name is a mouthful: the iShares Bitcoin Managed Protection ETF.

The idea behind it is much simpler.

BlackRock already operates the iShares Bitcoin Trust, or IBIT. That fund lets people get bitcoin exposure through the same brokerage account where they own stocks and bonds.

The proposed fund would go a step further. It would use options and fixed-income investments to pursue some of bitcoin’s upside while seeking to soften part of the downside.

Think of it as BlackRock trying to build a seat belt for bitcoin. You would still feel the bumps. The goal is to make the ride easier to live with.

Friends, take a step back and look at what BlackRock is doing.

Wall Street spent years treating bitcoin as something its clients should avoid. Now the world’s largest asset manager is building different ways for people to own it, including people who want bitcoin exposure but still hate the price swings.

BlackRock launched IBIT in January 2024. By October 20 of this year, the fund held more than $66 billion in net assets.

That tells you what happens when Wall Street makes an asset easier to own. People no longer had to learn a whole new system. They could buy bitcoin in an account they already knew and trusted.

That opened the door to a much bigger pool of money.

Now BlackRock is going after the next group: people who believe bitcoin belongs in a portfolio but still cannot stomach its gut-wrenching volatility.

I’m not recommending this proposed fund today, and it has not been approved yet. I’m paying attention because BlackRock does not spend time and money building a new product unless it sees a market for it.

And BlackRock isn’t the only one changing how it approaches this market.

Over the past several months, I’ve been doing some rethinking of my own. I’ve made a decision about my future in this market that I never expected to make.

I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Bitcoin Is Coiling Right Now