Bitcoin has surged over the last year, with the bitcoin price soaring to record highs as a perfect storm of Washington DC and Wall Street collide.
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The bitcoin price has dropped back from its peak of $110,000 per bitcoin reached in January ahead of U.S. president Donald Trump’s return to the White House (and hit by fears of a mystery new threat).
Now, as top traders bet on a looming Federal Reserve flip, the chief executive of the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock has warned bitcoin could be “eating away” at the U.S. dollar’s world’s reserve currency status.
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BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink has become one of the most bullish Wall Street voices on … More
“The U.S. has benefited from the dollar serving as the world’s reserve currency for decades. But that’s not guaranteed to last forever,” Fink wrote in his BlackRock annual letter, pointing to ballooning nation debt that’s seen this year’s interest payments alone top $952 billion.
“By 2030, mandatory government spending and debt service will consume all federal revenue, creating a permanent deficit. If the U.S. doesn’t get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like bitcoin.”
U.S. debt has soared over recent years, topping $34 trillion at the beginning of 2024 before climbing over $35 trillion just a year later, with Covid-era stimulus measures contributing to massive government spending and helping to send inflation spiraling out of control in 2022.
Inflation of over 10% forced the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates at a historical clip, pushing up debt interest payments and fueling fears of a “death spiral.”
“To be clear, I’m obviously not anti-digital assets (far from it),” Fink wrote, pointing to his plan to “democratize” access to finance and markets with crypto technology. “But two things can be true at the same time: Decentralized finance is an extraordinary innovation. It makes markets faster, cheaper, and more transparent. Yet that same innovation could undermine America’s economic advantage if investors begin seeing bitcoin as a safer bet than the dollar.”
Fink’s warning echos similar sentiment expressed by the likes of Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, who last month called the climbing U.S. debt clock “terrifying” and last year repeatedly warned of U.S. financial collapse while on the campaign trail for Trump.
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The bitcoin price has fallen from its all-time high but remains well above its 2024 levels.
Earlier this month, Fink warned Trump’s trade policies will see a return of inflation—dampening expectations the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates through 2025 and invoking the specter of “stagflation”—characterized by an economic slowdown coupled with spiraling price rises.
Fink, who has become one of the most bullish voices supporting bitcoin on Wall Street, led BlackRock in its campaign to get a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) approved in the U.S. through 2023, with a fleet of bitcoin funds making their debut in January 2024 before surging to become some of the fastest growing ETFs of all time.
U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs broke $100 billion in net assets for the first time in November, with BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) now boasting around $50 billion in assets under management.
