Crypto was once a fringe sideshow for the investing public, a concern for D.C. policymakers and a subject of ridicule for top Wall Street figures.
That changed in 2024.
Digital assets such as bitcoin (BTC-USD) can now be owned and traded by regular Americans like a stock. Some of the biggest players on Wall Street are hailing it as a wise investment. And an incoming administration in Washington, D.C., is promising major legislative changes to support the industry.
Crypto’s widespread acceptance translated into major gains for investors who were along for the ride.
Those holding bitcoin are up 126% since the beginning of the year as the price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency set new records and surged past $100,000 following the election of Donald Trump. The market value of all crypto swelled by nearly $1.7 trillion, according to Coinmarketcap.
“It’s all lining up for the crypto industry right now,” Ian Katz, a managing partner with Capital Alpha.
Enthusiasts don’t see the rally ending anytime soon.
This time next year, “we’re going to have the same conversation, that bitcoin has had an incredible run,” Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan said. Bitwise expects bitcoin to cross $200,000 before the end of 2025.
One of the biggest Wall Street beneficiaries of this shift, BlackRock (BLK) CEO Larry Fink, was once a “proud skeptic” of bitcoin. The boss of the world’s largest money manager has evolved into one of its best-known advocates.
“I was a proud skeptic, and I studied it, learned about it, and I came away saying, ‘OK, you know, my opinion [for] five years was wrong,'” Fink said earlier this year while discussing his previous views with CNBC.
His firm, BlackRock, now recommends intrigued investors put “as much as 2%” of their portfolio into bitcoin.
“We believe bitcoin is an asset class in itself; it is an alternative to other commodities like gold,” Fink told analysts during an October earnings call.
BlackRock and 10 other money managers such as Fidelity Investments and Franklin Templeton got the green light in January to launch spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, allowing everyday investors to get exposure to the world’s largest cryptocurrency without having to own it.
BlackRock’s ETF, IBIT, then became the fastest-growing ETF in history. The 11 ETFs that launched amassed $100 billion in assets under management as of Dec. 18, according to JPMorgan Research.
“You had folks who would have been allocating to bitcoin, but because there was no traditionally trusted, easy, efficient way to do it for their circumstances, they weren’t in it,” Robbie Mitchnick, BlackRock’s head of digital assets,”And then the ETFs changed that.”
