Bitcoin in BlackRock's Eyes: A Diversified Safe haven Investment Tool Different from Traditional Assets

After successfully launching a Bitcoin spot ETF, BlackRock recently released a detailed report outlining the unique position of Bitcoin among major asset classes.

The current market value of Bitcoin exceeds $1 trillion, and BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF launched earlier this year quickly accumulated $21 billion in managed assets due to strong market interest, making it one of the most successful ETFs in history.

In BlackRock's latest white paper, the institution explains why Bitcoin can become a "unique risk diversification tool" and why many investors find it difficult to compare it to "traditional assets" when analyzing Bitcoin. The report points out that the correlation between Bitcoin and US stocks or US dollar interest rates is often short-lived.

The uniqueness of Bitcoin makes it unsuitable for the definition of traditional financial frameworks. Although Bitcoin has had short-term fluctuations in conjunction with stocks, especially during periods of significant changes in US dollar real interest rates, its long-term correlation with stocks and bonds is low, and its historical returns are much higher than other major asset classes

In addition, BlackRock emphasized a key point when analyzing the performance of Bitcoin and the difficulty of predicting its price:

The correlation between Bitcoin and macro factors that affect most traditional asset classes is extremely low

This Wall Street giant points out that although Bitcoin remains a 'high-risk' asset class, it has outperformed all other major asset classes in seven out of the past decade. But at the same time, in the other three years, Bitcoin's performance was the worst. BlackRock explained in the report that:

The fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin partially reflect the evolving prospects of its widespread adoption as a global currency alternative over time,

Due to its apparent decoupling from global macroeconomic factors, Bitcoin can serve as a safe haven for some in geopolitical tensions. The report also points out that Bitcoin can provide protection in the event that the US federal deficit may lead to a weakening of the US dollar.

However, BlackRock emphasizes that Bitcoin still belongs to high-risk assets, but its source of risk is different from traditional investment assets, so the traditional definition framework of "risk assets" and "safe haven assets" does not apply to Bitcoin. Finally, BlackRock concludes:

"As the global investment community tries to cope with the growing geopolitical tensions, concerns about the US debt and deficit situation, and the growing global political instability, Bitcoin may be seen as an increasingly unique diversified investment tool to deal with some financial, monetary and geopolitical risk factors faced by investors, which may face other problems in the portfolio."