the world’s largest money manager said he was wrong

larry fink manages $11.5 trillion. thats more than the gdp of every country except the u.s. and china. in 2017, he called bitcoin "an index of money laundering" and added "and thieves" for good measure. he wasnt just skeptical.... he was dismissive. the kind of dismissive that comes from absolute certainty that youre right and the weirdos on the internet are wrong.

but at the dealbook summit this month? "my opinion was wrong. i believe bitcoin is legitimate."

he called it "a very glaring public example of a big shift" in his thinking. said his thought process "has evolved" through years of conversations with clients, policymakers, and yes.... those same weirdos he once dismissed. now blackrock runs the largest bitcoin etf on the planet. ibit has over $70 billion in assets. its become blackrocks most profitable product despite being less than two years old. harvard's endowment holds it. sovereign wealth funds hold it. the product he once said his firm had "no interest" in creating is now printing money.

heres what nobody talks about: changing your mind is the most expensive thing you can do. not financially. emotionally. admitting you were wrong means admitting the people you dismissed were right. it means some anonymous person on twitter in 2017 understood something the ceo of the worlds largest asset manager missed completely. thats a hard pill to swallow when your entire identity is built on being the smartest person in the room.

fink also said somthing interesting. he called bitcoin "an asset of fear." people buy it when theyre worried about physical security, financial security, or the debasement of traditional assets. he pointed out that bitcoin dropped when ukraine peace talks progressed and when the u.s.-china trade deal was announced. less fear, less demand. but heres the flip side of that.... theres always going to be fear. theres always going to be uncertainty. theres always going to be governments debasing their currencies to pay for things they cant afford.

the truth about paradigm shifts is that they dont ask permission. they dont wait for the institutions to approve. they dont care if larry fink thinks theyre legitimate or not. they just keep building until the institutions have no choice but to catch up. bitcoin didnt need blackrock. blackrock needed bitcoin.

fink didnt change his mind because bitcoin changed. he changed his mind because the world did. and by then, the early believers had already positioned themselves. the question isnt whether you were right five years ago.

its whether youre positioned for the next five.