#美SEC推动加密创新监管 The world's largest asset management company's money printing machine is actually this?

With $13.4 trillion in assets under management and 1,400 ETFs in operation, what would be the most profitable product line? Bond funds? Stock indices? Neither. The answer is surprising - Bitcoin ETF.

Cristiano Castro, the head of BlackRock's Brazil operations, recently revealed in an interview that the company's Bitcoin ETF has become the most profitable product line. This result was unexpected even for them internally.

The data is sufficient to illustrate the issue. IBIT launched in January and reached an asset scale of over $70 billion in just 341 days, setting a record for the fastest growth in ETF history. In its first year, it had a net inflow of over $52 billion, a performance that surpassed the total of all newly issued ETFs in the past decade. As of October, this product alone generated approximately $245 million in revenue for BlackRock just from management fees.

Why can it earn so much? The fee rate is the key. Traditional index funds charge 0.03%, while this Bitcoin ETF charges 0.25%—an eightfold difference. Even so, top institutions like Harvard University still invested $443 million heavily, accounting for over 20% of their U.S. stock position.

Some are concerned about the outflow of over $2 billion from IBIT in November. However, a BlackRock executive responded calmly, saying: "This is completely within the normal range." ETFs are essentially liquidity tools, and the inflow and outflow of funds is normal. Moreover, the price of Bitcoin has already risen above $90,000 again, and investors have an unrealized gain of about $3.2 billion.

The signals behind this matter are quite clear: the most profitable businesses in the traditional financial world have deeply intertwined with cryptocurrencies. When institutions managing trillions of dollars treat Bitcoin products as profit engines, the status of this asset class has long since changed.

For ordinary investors, institutions continuously building positions through ETFs as a compliant tool is itself the strongest endorsement. Short-term fluctuations can be ignored; the logic of long-term allocation is already very clear. At least the core BTC and ETH may be worth holding onto, rather than handing over the chips to institutions during the fluctuations.

When the world's largest asset management company makes a fortune from Bitcoin ETFs, the changes in the market landscape have already become very clear.