First, a sense of scale

BlackRock manages money for pension funds, insurers, banks, governments and individual investors. In its second-quarter 2026 results, the firm reported $15.3 trillion in assets under management. One percent of that figure is $153 billion.

The phrase "under management" matters. Those trillions belong to clients. BlackRock pools their capital in funds, invests it under a defined mandate and charges a fee for the service. Retail investors know this business mainly through iShares. Its Aladdin platform is another important piece of the company: large financial institutions use it to analyze portfolios and monitor risk.

Does BlackRock really own all that Bitcoin?

The iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, better known by its ticker IBIT, began trading on Nasdaq in January 2024. The structure is straightforward. Investors buy shares through a regular brokerage account, the trust holds Bitcoin, and Coinbase Custody safeguards the coins. The share price is designed to follow Bitcoin's market price, less the fund's expenses.

By mid-2026, IBIT held 771,641 BTC. That represented roughly 3.8% of the Bitcoin already in circulation and 3.7% of the protocol's 21 million coin limit. The number is large enough to fuel claims that BlackRock is buying up Bitcoin. In legal and economic terms, however, the coins belong to the trust for the benefit of its shareholders. They do not sit on BlackRock's corporate balance sheet. The firm sponsors and administers the fund, earning an annual fee of 0.25%.

IBIT's holdings move with demand for its shares. Creations bring more Bitcoin into the trust; redemptions reduce the position. These flows reflect client allocations rather than a directional bet by BlackRock's management on the next Bitcoin rally.

An IBIT shareholder does not receive Bitcoin at a personal wallet address. The investor owns an exchange-traded security that can be bought or sold during market hours. It cannot be sent to a crypto wallet or used as payment.

From skepticism to ETFs

Larry Fink, BlackRock's chief executive, described Bitcoin in 2017 as a speculative instrument whose popularity reflected demand for money laundering. His language changed over the following years. He later compared BTC with digital gold and called it an international asset.

The shift had a practical business case. Clients wanted crypto exposure in their portfolios, while regulated trading venues, institutional custody and more familiar reporting standards were taking shape around the market. For BlackRock, the opportunity looked familiar: place a difficult-to-hold asset inside a fund and charge for managing it.

The first major ties appeared in 2022. BlackRock invested in Circle, the company behind USDC, and Coinbase Prime was connected to Aladdin. A filing for a spot Bitcoin ETF followed in 2023. Once US regulators approved the new category, IBIT launched alongside the other spot funds.

Ether came next. The iShares Ethereum Trust ETF, or ETHA, follows the same basic model and tracks the price of ETH. By mid-2026, the fund had reached $8.3 billion in net assets.

Staked Ether: what investors actually receive

ETHB, the iShares fund that passes through staking income, began trading on Nasdaq on March 12, 2026. Under normal market conditions, the trust expects to stake between 70% and 95% of its Ether. The remainder provides liquidity for redemptions and day-to-day operations.

Coinbase Custody holds the assets, while Coinbase Prime coordinates the trust's work with validator providers. The ETHB prospectus names Figment, Galaxy Blockchain Infrastructure and Attestant.

The economics are more revealing than the shorthand "ETF with staking yield." An aggregate staking services fee equal to 18% of gross rewards covers the sponsor and infrastructure providers, including Coinbase and the validators. The remaining 82% stays with the trust for distribution to shareholders. ETHB intends to pay that income monthly, although the interval may extend to a quarter in certain circumstances.

The fund also charges a standard sponsor fee of 0.25% a year. A reduced rate of 0.12% applies to the first $2.5 billion of assets during the launch year.

BUIDL and the USDC connection

IBIT and ETHB place crypto assets inside a conventional exchange-traded wrapper. BUIDL takes the opposite route: it puts shares of a traditional investment fund on a blockchain.

The BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund launched in March 2024. Its portfolio holds cash, short-term US Treasury bills and repurchase agreements. Each digital share is designed to maintain a value of $1. Income accrues daily and is paid to investors each month in the form of additional tokens.

BUIDL operates under securities-fund rules and is available only to eligible institutional investors. Securitize handles the issuance and record-keeping for the tokenized shares, while BNY Mellon serves as custodian. After its debut on Ethereum, the fund expanded to Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum and other networks.

A similar conservative portfolio sits behind much of USDC's reserves. Circle remains the stablecoin's issuer. BlackRock manages the Circle Reserve Fund, which holds most of the assets backing USDC, and BNY Mellon again acts as custodian. BlackRock's role is therefore in reserve management; Circle controls the minting and redemption of the stablecoin itself.

What BlackRock's arrival changed

The iShares products gave large investors a familiar route into Bitcoin and Ether: a brokerage account, standard reporting and professional custody. That convenience also created a new point of concentration. With about 3.8% of circulating Bitcoin held by IBIT in mid-2026, inflows and outflows from a single fund became large enough to affect market demand and liquidity.

Influence over market flows is different from control over Bitcoin. Managing a large fund gives BlackRock no special power to change the supply schedule, reverse transactions or rewrite the network's rules. Those decisions still depend on consensus among the protocol's participants.

That is the substance of BlackRock's relationship with crypto. On one side, it packages BTC and ETH for investors who prefer conventional market infrastructure. On the other, it moves funds and dollar-based assets onto public blockchains. The business model is classic asset management applied to a new set of assets and settlement rails: gather capital, operate funds and collect fees.