BlackRock Accelerates Its Expansion into Digital Assets in 2025, Diverging Bitcoin and Ethereum Adoption

In an interview on the Empire podcast, Samara Cohen, Senior Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer of ETF and Index Investments at BlackRock, offered a rare window into how the world's largest asset manager views the two largest crypto assets — and why Bitcoin stands decisively ahead of Ethereum in client demand and portfolio integration.

As BlackRock (NYSE:) accelerates its expansion into digital assets in 2025, the divergence between Bitcoin and Ethereum in institutional adoption has become increasingly pronounced.

In a recent interview on the Empire podcast, Samara Cohen, Senior Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer of ETF and Index Investments at BlackRock, offered a rare window into how the world’s largest asset manager views the two largest crypto assets — and why Bitcoin stands decisively ahead of Ethereum in client demand and portfolio integration.

Discussing the historic launch of the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), which was a pivotal moment in BlackRock’s digital asset strategy, Cohen elaborated on the key factors that drove the move.

“It was all three of those things,” Cohen said, referring to the investment thesis and client demand to market structure and readiness to obviously the regulatory backdrop.

The iShares Bitcoin Trust is a product that was heavily requested by clients. They want to diversify their portfolios with Bitcoin but they can’t get it in a structured way, so we set out to create a product that meets the needs of clients.”

Before any regulatory greenlight, the core motivation was the strong desire from investors to access Bitcoin as part of diversified portfolios. This desire was a constant theme throughout 2023, as investors showed keen interest in integrating Bitcoin into their investment strategies.

The launch of IBIT was not BlackRock’s first move into Bitcoin. In 2022, the firm introduced a private Bitcoin trust for institutional clients, a critical internal milestone.

“We didn’t get hands-on to actual Bitcoin until we launched that institutional product in 2022,” Cohen explained. “That was a very important institutional moment for us to just get comfortable with the workflows and the risk management and the systems.”

The demand for Bitcoin was both broader and deeper than many had anticipated. IBIT has become the most successful ETP launch in history, a fact Cohen attributes in part to a previously untapped segment of investors.

“Broadly speaking, about half of IBIT’s holders right now are what we call self-directed investors,” she noted. “For 3/4 of that population, they set up a brokerage account in some cases and bought their first ETP because they wanted their Bitcoin in the ETP wrapper.”

This stands in sharp contrast to Ethereum, where Cohen’s tone was notably more cautious. While BlackRock has also launched Ethereum-based ETPs, demand has been far less robust.

“We have launched Ethereum-based ETPs, but the demand has been minimal compared to Bitcoin. But I think that’s also a function of just the use cases and investment thesis being more well-defined for Bitcoin.”

Unlike Bitcoin, which is increasingly viewed as a potential store of value and a diversifying asset class, Ethereum’s investment thesis has yet to solidify at the institutional level.

Cohen further elaborated on the complexity institutions face when evaluating Ethereum.

“You might be really bullish on the utility of the public Ethereum blockchain but not necessarily know how that translates into value accrual to the native token, which is really what matters to institutional investors.”

This uncertainty complicates the case for broad-based adoption. While Bitcoin’s narrative as a “borderless store of value” is relatively straightforward, Ethereum’s positioning remains more opaque, intertwining technological utility with questions about token economics, competition, and long-term market dynamics.

Beyond the narrative gap, Cohen identified a more structural obstacle: crypto’s general lack of standardized data and metrics.

“Crypto does broadly have a data and standards problem,” she stated, adding that traditional markets have well-defined metrics for evaluating investments.

Drawing comparisons to traditional markets, Cohen emphasized that metrics like cash flow, governance, and team transparency — critical components for equity investing — are largely absent or inconsistent across most crypto assets.

“If I think about indexing fundamentally as an organizing technology for a market, how do you perform that task in crypto right now?” she asked rhetorically, highlighting how foundational standards remain missing even in leading crypto ecosystems.

Bitcoin’s adoption, by contrast, is supported by clearer metrics around its scarcity, issuance schedule, and market infrastructure maturity, making it easier to fit into traditional portfolio models.

Cohen confirmed that BlackRock recommends a 1–2% Bitcoin allocation for investors seeking exposure, which is based on their analysis of risk contribution to portfolios.

“If you go beyond 2%, the incremental contribution to overall portfolio volatility gets exponentially higher,” she cautioned investors.

While Ethereum continues to make technological strides — particularly in decentralized finance and onchain applications — BlackRock’s view, at least for now, reflects the reality that institutions require clarity, standardization, and well-defined valuation models before committing meaningful capital.

As Cohen summarized, “Understanding how to create a valuation framework for Ethereum or any other token gets more complicated.”

At press time, BTC traded at $95,120.