BlackRock’s head of digital assets, Robert Mitchnick, said the $14 trillion asset manager won’t get creative with the types of cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds it offers, even as it launched a staking-focused ETF on Thursday.
Speaking on CNBC’s Crypto World segment on Friday, Mitchnick acknowledged that some of the crypto ETF structures that other asset managers are experimenting with may appeal to certain investors, but said BlackRock will continue to take a more measured approach:
“Are we going to see some more exotic objects coming into space? I think there’s no question,” Mitchnick said. “Some of them will be interesting. Some of them will resonate with investors.”
However, “We will be very cautious about where we expand on this.”
Mitchnick said that while much of the investor interest is in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), BlackRock is also seeing “pockets of interest in some other assets.”
“We’ll continue to evaluate them as conditions and timing, liquidity scale and use cases develop, but we’re very cautious about what we’re putting into the iShares ETF.”
According to Farside Investors, BlackRock launched the iShares Staked Ethereum Trust (ETHB) on Thursday, which saw more than $15.5 million in trading volume and $43.5 million in revenue on debut.
ETHB allows investors to earn by staking Ethereum rewards on potential price increases in Ether price.
ETHB is BlackRock’s second Ether product, following the iShares Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA), which has accumulated nearly $12 billion in inflows since its launch in July 2024.
BlackRock has a Bitcoin Income ETF in the works
BlackRock also wants to offer a Bitcoin Premium Income ETF, which sells call options on Bitcoin futures and collects premiums for generating yield.
However, regular distributions give investors a potential alternative to investing in the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust ETH (IBIT), which mirrors the spot price of Bitcoin.
related to: Bitcoin ETFs Add $251M As Goldman Sachs Leads XRP ETF Holders
Speaking at IBIT, Mitchnick noted that investors in BlackRock’s flagship Bitcoin product have been “disproportionately buy and hold” investors — even as there is strong selling pressure elsewhere in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
“They tend to opportunistically buy dips,” Mitchnick said of investors in IBIT, which has raised more than $63 billion since its January 2024 launch.
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