© Courtesy of Metro We are in the middle of a “crypto winter”, say some experts (Photo: Getty)The CEO of the world's largest asset manager BlackRock believes most crypto companies could close in the near future.
During an interview at the New York Times DealBook Summit last week, Larry Fink shared his thoughts on the current cryptocurrency crisis.
"In fact, I don't think most of the companies would be there," he said.
Fink was referring to the collapse of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange that collapsed in early November. BlackRock, like many other financial institutions, has invested millions of dollars in this business.
The value of some of the world's largest crypto companies, including Coinbase Global Inc and MicroStrategy Inc, has fallen by more than 25% over the past month.
And at least according to Fink, many of the smaller players in the crypto world will not survive.
But despite the skepticism about digital currencies, the 70 year old CFO has some positive things to say about the technology.
In particular, the tokenization of securities, which creates a digital representation of an asset on the blockchain. This could mean decentralized and instant identification of transaction history and ownership.
“If we had this distributed ledger where we know every profitable owner, every profitable seller, we all have our own code, who buys, who sells, instant settlement, it changes the whole ecosystem, you don't need a trusted bank .” - Traitor. it says:
© Courtesy of Metro Larry Fink on stage in The New York Times DealBook 2022 (Source: Getty Images)Sam Walkering, Head of Crypto Research at Southbank Research, told Metro.co.uk: “I saw the interview Fink gave at the NYT Deal Book Summit and there was some benefit from his views on how most crypto companies get shut down.
“In a way, every crypto cycle is similar in that companies overstretch, over-leverage, and have poor trading standards, which will lead to a crash just like a normal market.
“But Fink also said he believes the next generation of securities will be tokenized , and he thinks decentralized ledger technology is very important.
“The way he talks about things like instant settlement, buyer and seller transparency, voting, and everything crypto networks do bodes very positively for the long term future of the decentralized finance opportunity (Challenge).”
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