The chief executive of BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, thinks most crypto firms may go out of business in the near future.

During an interview at last week’s New York Times DealBook Summit, Larry Fink, gave his thoughts on the current crypto crisis.

‘I actually believe most of the companies are not going to be around,’ he said.

Fink was referring to the implosion of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange that collapsed in early November. BlackRock, like many other financial institutions, had millions of dollars invested in the company.

Some of the world’s biggest crypto companies, including Coinbase Global Inc and MicroStrategy Inc, have seen their values drop more than 25 per cent last month.

And, at least according to Fink, many smaller players in the crypto world just won’t survive.

But, despite being a sceptic of digital currency, the 70-year-old finance exec did have some positive things to say about the technology.

Specifically, the tokenisation of securities – whereby a digital representation of an asset is created on the blockchain. This could mean a decentralised and instantaneous authenticatation of its transaction and ownership history.

‘If we can have that distributed ledger that we know every beneficial owner, every beneficial seller, we all have our code of who’s buying, who’s selling, instantaneous settlement, it changes the whole ecosystem, you don’t need trust banks,’ Fink said.

Sam Volkering, Head of Crypto Research at Southbank Research, told Metro.co.uk: ‘I saw the interview Fink did at the NYT Deal Book summit, and his point about most crypto companies folding has some merit to it.

‘In a sense, every crypto cycle is similar in that companies overstretch, are too highly leveraged and have poor business standards – that will lead to failures, just like regular markets.

‘But what Fink also said was that he believes the next generation of securities will the tokenisation of securities, and he said he believes decentralised ledger technology is very important.

‘The way he spoke about things like instant settlement, transparency of buyers and sellers, voting, all things that crypto networks do now, is very positive for the longer term future of decentralised finance (DeFi) opportunities.’

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