Speaking from the Nakamoto Stage at the Bitcoin 2025 Conference, Robert Mitchnick, Head of Digital Assets at BlackRock, made a compelling case for BTC’s unique position in global finance—suggesting that the world’s largest asset manager sees Bitcoin not only as a legitimate portfolio hedge but also as a superior alternative to gold.
Mitchnick described the performance of BlackRock’s iShares BTC Trust (IBIT) as “unprecedented,” but emphasized that this was still the early stage of adoption. “It’s very early in the life cycle of an ETF,” he said. “In many instances, it takes multiple years to truly get all the cylinders firing—from education to institutional diligence to onboarding across major wealth platforms.”
Bitcoin Over Gold
While IBIT has already gained massive traction in US markets, BlackRock has recently launched a similar product in Europe and sees global expansion as essential. “We’re excited,” Mitchnick said. “This has really been a global story… even if you look at IBIT’s numbers, a massive amount of that actually comes from offshore wealth channels, including Asia.”
A key theme of Mitchnick’s remarks was the growing institutional normalization of BTC. He cited BlackRock’s own model portfolios—widely used by wealth managers—as a turning point. “In February of this year, just about three months ago, one of those portfolios added Bitcoin as an allocation in the 1 to 2% range,” Mitchnick said. “That was not a sudden reaction to any one thing—that was the result of multiple years of analysis and research.” These allocations, he explained, allow financial advisers to include BTC without requiring direct client demand, accelerating passive adoption across advisory networks.
Mitchnick pushed back hard against the long-standing claim that BTC merely behaves like a speculative tech stock. “Through most of Bitcoin’s history, it’s had very low correlation [to equities],” he noted. While he acknowledged periods of short-term alignment—particularly among leveraged retail traders—he argued that institutional investors see BTC differently: “They view Bitcoin as a differentiator in a portfolio and a potential hedge against some of the left-tail risks that exist elsewhere in traditional assets.”
He illustrated the point with a sharp anecdote: “Think back to August 5th… the market had a mini meltdown and Bitcoin got clobbered that day. It had nothing to do with Bitcoin fundamentally… but Bitcoin doubled over the next four months.” According to Mitchnick, this shows how short-term volatility often leads to accumulation by long-term holders—those who view Bitcoin not as a “risk-on asset” but as a monetary hedge.
Asked directly about the ongoing gold-versus-BTC debate, Mitchnick avoided the typical zero-sum framing. “They’re both global, scarce, decentralized, fixed-supply assets,” he said. “Gold has much less volatility and a longer history. But Bitcoin is digitally native, efficient to store, and can be transferred anywhere in near real time at near-zero cost.” Then he delivered the verdict: “Bitcoin has much higher upside than gold—and lower downside.”
He also addressed why this narrative isn’t more dominant. “It’s amazing to me that the industry hasn’t promoted this more effectively,” he said, criticizing financial media and research firms that still link BTC’s value to irrelevant macro headlines. “Bitcoin’s never heard of tariffs. Doesn’t know what they are.”
When asked about future crypto ETFs beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum, Mitchnick drew a firm line. “Bitcoin is in a category of one,” he said. “The rest of crypto competes in different lanes, with different use cases… it looks more like tech equities or venture exposure.” As a result, he expects the correlation between BTC and other digital assets to fall further.
On the topic of regulation, Mitchnick welcomed the growing bipartisan interest in Washington. “It’s just a great and encouraging thing that there is such momentum behind developing a regulatory framework,” he said. “Whether we’re talking about stablecoins or market structure, there’s great momentum there—and we’re excited to see how that shakes out.”
At press time, BTC traded at $108,879.
