(CoinDesk) - BlackRock (BLK) CEO Larry Fink has been "orange-pilled," or converted from being a bitcoin (BTC) nonbeliever into a believer, Mike Novogratz said in an interview with Bloomberg last week.
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Mike Novogratz called Larry Fink "the most important thing that happened this year in bitcoin."
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"Orange pilling" is a term given to the process of a bitcoin non-believer becoming a believer
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BlackRock's spot bitcoin ETF application in June showed signs of breaking the deadlock in the SEC approval process for such a fund in the U.S.
Novogratz, CEO of crypto-focused financial services firm Galaxy Digital (GLXY), said Fink is "the most important thing that happened this year in bitcoin," because of BlackRock's application to list a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the U.S. in June.
“Larry was a nonbeliever. Now he says, ‘Hey, this is going to be a global currency.’ People around the world all trust it,” Novogratz said
The possibility of BlackRock, one of the world's largest asset management firms, leading the way among a flurry of spot bitcoin ETFs possibly gaining regulatory approval in the U.S. is part of an "adoption cycle," in the cryptocurrency industry, Novogratz said.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has rejected dozens of applications to list spot bitcoin ETFs, a policy that has been seen as a major factor inhibiting wider mainstream crypto adoption. BlackRock's application included a "surveillance-sharing" agreement, which is supposed to guard against market manipulation and is considered to make it more acceptable to the SEC. Several other asset managers subsequently refiled applications also including such an agreement.
Novogratz also called Ripple's recent partial victory over the SEC in their legal battle a victory for crypto because it demonstrated that "the rules are nothing close to clear." The judge in the case ruled that the sale of XRP tokens on exchanges and through algorithms did not constitute investment contracts, in contradiction to the SEC's long-held view.
By Jamie Crawley
