Barclays Bank, once skeptical of Bitcoin, has invested $131 million in BlackRock’s iShares spot Bitcoin ETF.
This marks a major shift from its 2021 stance, where it deemed Bitcoin “uninvestable” due to volatility.
Barclays Bank, a big global bank with assets worth more than $1.5 trillion, put $131 million into BlackRock’s iShares spot Bitcoin ETF in 2024. In a normal SEC report on Thursday, the investment was made public.
This shows that Barclays has changed its mind about Bitcoin. Back in 2021, the bank told clients not to add Bitcoin to their accounts because it was “uninvestable” because of its high volatility.
“Its volatility makes the asset almost ‘uninvestable’ from a portfolio perspective,” the article stated. “Many would probably throw the cryptocurrency out of any portfolio in a typical mean-variance optimisation.”
