BlackRock’s crypto exchange-traded products pulled in $935 million in the first quarter of 2026.
Over the past year, $32 billion has flowed into the asset giant.
It comes as Bitcoin ETF competition is heating up.
BlackRock’s crypto business is growing — kind of.
The $13 trillion asset manager pulled in $935 million of net inflows into its crypto exchange-traded funds in the first quarter of 2026 and $32 billion over the past year.
In total, the company saw $130 billion in net inflows to its products in the first quarter, according to the company’s Q1 earnings.
“This was one of the strongest starts to the year in BlackRock’s history,” Larry Fink, BlackRock’s CEO, said at the company’s earnings call.
Even so, BlackRock’s crypto category remains a rounding error on the firm’s balance sheet. These products generated a scant $42 million in quarterly base fees. That’s pretty meager for a firm that posted $6.7 billion in total revenue over the same time period.
BlackRock posted its results for the first three months of 2026 as competition in Bitcoin ETFs is heating up. Earlier in April, Morgan Stanley became the first Wall Street bank to launch a Bitcoin ETF, which aims to compete with BlackRock’s fund with lower fees.
And no wonder, institutional interest in digital assets is growing. While Bitcoin used to be the sole domain of hedge funds and family offices with an appetite for higher risk assets, pension funds and university superannuation funds increasingly invest in the asset class too.
If Morgan Stanley is successful, then many other banks might follow suit.
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BlackRock is leading the pack. Of the 1.6 million Bitcoin that sits in ETFs, around 890,000 of that belongs to BlackRock clients, according to Dune. That’s more than 50% of the entire sector’s market share. Trailing far behind is Fidelity, with 12%.
Doubling down
And BlackRock isn’t slowing down.
In January, the company filed for a second Bitcoin product that would sell call options on IBIT shares to generate a monthly yield for its investors.
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The move signalled that BlackRock sees sustained demand for Bitcoin products among its investor base, even if revenue still hasn’t caught up to the interest just yet.
Fink and some of the firm’s top executives have been among the most vocal Bitcoin bulls on Wall Street.
Last year, as Bitcoin “decoupled” from traditional equities, Jay Jacobs, BlackRock’s US head of equity ETFs came out saying that investors were “looking for those assets that behave differently.”
And then only four days later, Samara Cohen, BlackRock’s CIO of ETF and Index Investments, said "Institutional investors are really largely focused on Bitcoin."
Pedro Solimano is a markets correspondent based in Buenos Aires. Got a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.
