BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has launched a spot bitcoin private trust for institutional clients.

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The trust is available for U.S. institutional clients and will track the performance of bitcoin, offering direct exposure to the price of the cryptocurrency, according to a blog post on its website.

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“Despite the steep downturn in the digital asset market, we are still seeing substantial interest from some institutional clients in how to efficiently and cost-effectively access these assets using our technology and product capabilities,” it said.

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The $10 trillion asset manager has been exploring four areas of digital assets where it sees potential to benefit its clients and capital markets more broadly, including permissioned blockchains, stablecoins, crypto assets, and tokenization.

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This comes a week after BlackRock announced a partnership with Coinbase to provide institutional clients of Aladdin, its end-to-end investment management platform, with direct access to crypto through connectivity with Coinbase Prime.

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BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has significantly changed his perspective on bitcoin over the past years. In 2017, Fink stated, "bitcoin just shows you how much demand for money laundering there is in the world,” adding “that’s all it is”.

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