BlackRock earned $82M from crypto as $30B of assets declined

BlackRock reported $82 million in revenue from its digital-asset products in the first half of 2026 while falling Bitcoin and Ether prices reduced the assets supporting those funds by roughly $30 billion. The firm is pursuing stablecoin reserve mandates and tokenized fund offerings to diversify digital revenue sources.

The revenue comprised $42 million in base fees and securities-lending income in the first quarter and $40 million in the three months ended June 30. Fee income held up because fees were collected on average balances that were higher than the amounts held at the end of June. Average digital-asset assets under management were $67.74 billion in the first quarter and $61.48 billion in the second; ending digital-asset AUM declined to $48.84 billion on June 30.

Digital-asset AUM dropped to $48.84 billion from $78.44 billion at the end of December, a 38% fall. BlackRock attributed $27.4 billion of that decline to lower cryptocurrency prices, $2.18 billion to net investor withdrawals and $11 million to foreign-exchange effects, meaning price moves accounted for about 93% of the reduction. Bitcoin and Ether each fell more than 26% since the start of the year.

Investor flows shifted during the period. Crypto products attracted about $934 million of inflows in the first quarter, but market declines reduced the March 31 balance to $60.67 billion. In the second quarter, investors redeemed $3.12 billion and market movements erased another $8.71 billion, causing digital-asset AUM to fall 19.5% between March and June. Because BlackRock’s spot ETFs track the underlying tokens, fund assets can shrink sharply with token prices even when redemptions are modest. By mid-July the iShares Bitcoin Trust and iShares Ethereum Trust held a combined $52.6 billion.

On the earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Martin Small set a $500 million annual revenue target for the digital-asset business by 2030 and identified three priorities: connecting regulated investment products to digital markets, managing reserves that back stablecoins, and tokenizing traditional investment products. He stated: “Over the longer term, we want BlackRock’s products to be accessible natively where many investors already hold digital assets.” He also said: “We want to build a digital wallet-native asset manager.”

BlackRock manages about $60 billion of reserves for Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, an amount that represents nearly one-fifth of an approximately $310 billion stablecoin market. Reserve mandates generate management fees on the cash, Treasury securities and other assets that back stablecoins and align with BlackRock’s existing money-market and cash-management operations.

The firm has introduced product features intended to widen fee sources. In February it launched the iShares Staked Ethereum Trust, which offers exposure to Ether plus a share of staking rewards. In June it launched the iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF, which combines Bitcoin exposure with an options strategy aimed at producing monthly income. BlackRock operates BUIDL, a tokenized Treasury and cash-management fund, and has filed registration statements for two tokenized money-market offerings: one to create an Ethereum-based share class for an existing fund and another that would add digital features such as daily dividend reinvestment.

Those tokenized products are planned to operate across multiple blockchain networks and to allow subscriptions and redemptions funded with stablecoins, enabling investors to move from digital cash into money-market funds without routing through a traditional brokerage or bank account. BlackRock expects to extend tokenization to a wider set of products, including ETFs and long-term stock and bond portfolios, and to use digital-wallet distribution alongside conventional channels.