BlackRock Adds Over $22 Billion in Crypto to Its Portfolio

By the end of 2025, BlackRock’s crypto holdings no longer looked like an experiment. The numbers told a steadier story. Bitcoin and Ethereum holdings climbed from $54.8 billion to $77.3 billion in a single year, a 41% increase that suggested planning rather than impulse.

Bitcoin remained the anchor. That wasn’t surprising. Institutions tend to move where liquidity is deepest and narratives feel settled. Ethereum followed closely, reinforcing the sense that this allocation was built around infrastructure, not novelty.

There was a moment earlier in the year when a senior portfolio manager described the exposure as “measured,” and the word lingered. I remember thinking how different that sounded compared to the dismissive tone of just a few years ago.

This wasn’t a loud declaration. No sweeping manifesto. Just capital moving deliberately on-chain, quarter by quarter, until the scale became impossible to ignore. By December, the shift felt less like a bet and more like acceptance.

BTC holdings increased by more than 217,000 coins, lifting the value of BlackRock’s Bitcoin position from just over $51 billion to approximately $67 billion by year-end, reflecting a $15.98 billion increase, or 31% year over year.

Ethereum, however, delivered the fastest growth. By December 2025, BlackRock had added over 2.4 million ETH to its books. Not as a headline-grabbing splash, but through steady, deliberate allocation. Its Ethereum exposure jumped from $3.6 billion to just over $10 billion in twelve months — a 184% rise that looked less like speculation and more like strategy.

Institutional interest in Ethereum’s core functions — tokenization, settlement layers, yield-bearing protocols — became visibly stronger. For large-scale managers, ETH isn’t just an asset; it’s increasingly a piece of the plumbing. Something useful, not just something volatile.

Diana Paluteder from Finbold noted that it wasn’t the size of the bets that stood out, but the rhythm. Month after month, BlackRock added more, even when the noise faded.

I found that particularly telling.

Ethereum, once framed as a speculative second-place token, has become a different kind of narrative: one about rails and rails alone. Quietly, that narrative has found an audience with very deep pockets.

Accumulation continued through periods of market consolidation, reinforcing the idea that large institutions are treating crypto as a strategic long-duration allocation.”

Jordan Major, Editor at Finbold, added that the composition of the portfolio reflects where institutional conviction remains strongest:

“Bitcoin continues to anchor BlackRock’s crypto exposure, but Ethereum’s outsized growth in 2025 signals increasing confidence in its role within tokenization, settlement, and yield-bearing infrastructure. Together, the data points to a maturing institutional approach to digital assets.”

Taken together, Finbold’s analysis indicates that BlackRock’s expansion in crypto exposure during 2025 was driven by sustained investor demand for regulated access to digital assets, reinforcing the view that institutional adoption has entered a more structural phase.