BlackRock CEO Larry Fink Issues US Dollar Warning, Says Greenback at Risk of Losing World Reserve Status to Bitcoin

The CEO of the largest asset manager in the world says that the US dollar may be losing its reserve status to Bitcoin ( BTC ).

In his annual letter to investors, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says that US dollar supremacy can’t last forever and is already being weakened – not only due to skyrocketing debt but also the rise of digital assets and decentralized finance (DeFi).

Says Fink,

“The U.S. has benefited from the dollar serving as the world’s reserve currency for decades.

But that’s not guaranteed to last forever. The national debt has grown at three times the pace of GDP since Times Square’s debt clock started ticking in 1989.57 This year, interest payments will surpass $952 billion— exceeding defense spending. By 2030, mandatory government spending and debt service will consume all federal revenue, creating a permanent deficit. If the U.S. doesn’t get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like Bitcoin.

To be clear, I’m obviously not anti-digital assets (far from it; see the next section). But two things can be true at the same time: Decentralized finance is an extraordinary innovation. It makes markets faster, cheaper, and more transparent. Yet that same innovation could undermine America’s economic advantage if investors begin seeing Bitcoin as a safer bet than the dollar.”

BlackRock heavily invested in Bitcoin in 2024 with the launch of its iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), which would ultimately become the most successful exchange-traded fund (ETF) launch of all time.

Fink, who oversees $11.5 trillion in assets at BlackRock, notes how the world’s financial system runs on “plumbing built when trading floors still shouted orders and fax machines felt revolutionary,” opening the door for smoother, faster technology like blockchain-based tokenization.

The CEO says, “If SWIFT is the postal service, tokenization is email itself.”

“Every stock, every bond, every fund—every asset—can be tokenized. If they are, it will revolutionize investing. Markets wouldn’t need to close. Transactions that currently take days would clear in seconds. And billions of dollars currently immobilized by settlement delays could be reinvested immediately back into the economy, generating more growth. Perhaps most importantly, tokenization makes investing much more democratic.”

Featured Image: Shutterstock/Blackdog1966/Andy Chipus