The world’s largest asset manager has a name for what’s happening between Wall Street and crypto. BlackRock is calling it “The Great Convergence,” and if the data behind the label is any indication, the two financial universes are colliding faster than most people expected.
Jay Jacobs, BlackRock’s US Head of Equity ETFs, coined the term during an appearance on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction podcast. His thesis is straightforward: the era of DeFi versus TradFi is over. The era of DeFi and TradFi is just getting started.
The IBIT pipeline effect
Here’s the number that makes the whole “convergence” argument concrete: roughly 75% of investors who bought BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) had never owned an ETF before. Not a single one. These were crypto-native individuals whose entire investing experience lived on-chain, and IBIT became their first taste of a traditional wrapper product.
After parking capital in IBIT, many of those same first-time ETF buyers started shopping the rest of BlackRock’s shelf. They moved into the firm’s S&P 500 ETF (IVV), its gold fund (IAU), and its AI-focused ETF (BAI). In English: people who came for the Bitcoin stayed for the index funds.
