Crypto Market Braces for Major Disruption as Institutional Giants Enter the Fray

BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, has applied for a spot bitcoin ETF with Coinbase as its custodial partner, raising concerns about a potential hostile takeover of the cryptocurrency by old-world wealth. The entry of heavily regulated investment into bitcoin appears bullish for the industry, but some fear that BlackRock could take over the storage unit of Xapo, the institutional-scale crypto custody tool that Coinbase acquired in 2019. The Bitcoin community has pushed back against the ETF application, but Mark Yusko believes that the bigger the network, the more adoption, and the higher the value of the network.