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Bitcoin got a little less dramatic
Bitcoin has been lounging in a tight range for more than a month after pushing above $80,000 in August, and BlackRock says that’s not a glitch. Jay Jacobs, the firm’s U.S. equity ETFs chief, says Bitcoin’s volatility has compressed from around 80 to the 35% to 40% zone.
IBIT: the volume knob for crypto
The big reason, according to BlackRock? IBIT. Once Bitcoin got packaged into an easy, brokerage-account-friendly ETF, advisers and institutions no longer had an easy excuse to skip the conversation. More buyers, more hedgers, more options activity — and suddenly the asset behaves a lot less like a casino jackpot machine.
BlackRock says the ETF ecosystem now lets investors do the fancy stuff too:
- borrow against Bitcoin holdings
- layer in options strategies
- access in-kind transactions at a $1.5 million minimum
That’s a very Wall Street way of making a very volatile thing feel a bit more normal.
Why investors should care
Lower volatility can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can make Bitcoin more palatable for pensions, advisers, and other suit-and-tie allocators. On the other hand, if you were hoping for the old whiplash, you may not get the same fireworks.
Jacobs also said BlackRock is staying focused on the big two — Bitcoin and Ethereum — rather than spraying products across every coin with a white paper. Big picture: if BlackRock is right, the ETF wrapper isn’t just a distribution channel. It’s changing how crypto trades.