During a conversation with Mark Carney, a former Governor of the Bank of England, at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), BlackRock CEO Larry Fink raised the possibility that Bitcoin could end up evolving into a global market, CNBC reports. 

As of now, according to the boss of the the biggest asset management firm, Bitcoin is still a “thin market”:     

“Bitcoin has caught the attention and the imagination of many people. Still untested, pretty small market relative to other markets. You see these big giant moves every day…it’s a thin market. Can it evolve into a global market? Possibly.”

From an index of money laundering to a gold rival  

Back in October 2017, Fink slammed Bitcoin as an “index of money laundering”:

“Bitcoin just shows you how much demand for money laundering there is in the world. That’s all it is.”     

In November 2018, he claimed that the top cryptocurrency wasn’t legitimate:

“I don’t sense that any government will allow that unless they have a sense of where that money’s going.”    

Fink’s U-turn on Bitcoin comes after BlackRock CIO Rick Rieder said that the world’s largest cryptocurrency could take the place of gold “to a large extent.”    

The  $7.43 trillion asset management firm already has exposure to Bitcoin via business-intelligence firm MicroStrategy that holds 38,250 BTC. BlackRock Fund Advisors owns 1,072,819 shares that are currently valued at $179.2 million.

Bitcoin could threaten the dollar 

Digital currencies also make Fink question the future of the U.S. Dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

He believes that Bitcoin is making the greenback “less relevant” for international holders. 

The flagship cryptocurrency is up 160 percent year-to-date after rocketing to a new all-time high of $19,918 on the Bitstamp exchange on Dec.1.