BlackRock’s Mitchnick Says Bitcoin Could Reflexively Become a Low-Beta Equity Play
Author: Omkar Godbole | Edited by: Oliver Knight Updated: April 30, 2025, 1:52 pm Published: April 30, 2025, 8:39 am
Bitcoin (BTC), the world’s largest digital asset by market capitalization, has been stable of late amid President Donald Trump’s trade war, which has contributed to a shift away from U.S. assets.
This so-called split has bolstered the cryptocurrency community’s belief that BTC is a safe haven asset and a low beta play compared to stocks.
BlackRock’s Robert Mitchinick believes that cryptocurrency could reflexively transform into a permanent low-beta play.
“It doesn’t make any fundamental sense, but if it’s repeated often enough, it can become a little self-fulfilling, right?” Mitchnick said at a panel discussion at the Dubai Token2049 conference on Wednesday. “It can happen reflexively because enough experts, research papers and other commentators have said that’s what’s going to happen.”
Investors dumped U.S. assets, including the tech-heavy Nasdaq and S&P 500, earlier this month as escalating trade tensions between the U.S. and China raised recession fears. But BTC has remained relatively stable, so much so that on a seven-day basis, the cryptocurrency has shown less volatility than the S&P 500.
Mitchnick explained that this short-term gap strengthened the crypto community’s faith in an asset that is known to be separate from the economic, political and financial risks of a particular country, which contributed to a resumption of capital inflows into U.S.-listed spot ETFs.
Investors have poured at least $3 billion into spot ETFs over the past ten trading days, with BlackRock’s IBIT seeing the largest inflows, according to Farside Investors.
Mitchinick added that part of the recent decoupling could be due to BTC being transferred from less stable holders to longer-term, fundamentals-focused ones. The shift is “definitely happening,” he said.
VanEck CEO Jan van Eck, speaking on the same panel, expressed hope that Bitcoin would return to the pre-2020 period when it had no correlations.
The institutionalization of BTC following the Covid crash in 2020 and the debut of ETFs early last year has led to correlations between the cryptocurrency and trading assets, mainly the Nasdaq index. This has made BTC less attractive as a portfolio diversifier.
Jan van Eck explained that traders will be more inclined to hold more BTC if the correlation continues to weaken.
UPDATE (April 30, 09:19 UTC): Added the word “Reflexive” to the title
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