A drastic drop from 25 million to 1 million dollars and a BlackRock which discreetly passes more than 5 billion dollars of bitcoin into ETF shares. You will see, the reason given by the Wall Street giant really has nothing to do with taxation.
In brief
- BlackRock goes from $25 million to $1 million for direct BTC → ETF conversion.
- The Coldcard wallet hack pushes holders to prefer institutional custody to self-custody.
- Via Securitize, Wormhole and RLUSD, BlackRock is quietly building bridges to the XRP ecosystem.
BlackRock breaks down bitcoin barriers
In July 2026, BlackRock reduced the threshold for direct bitcoin-to-ETF conversion on its IBIT fund. We went from 25 million dollars to 1 million, with more than 5 billion dollars already crushed by this mechanism. According to Robbie Mitchnick of BlackRock, this growth will continue to climb because access continues to expand.
The psychological aspect plays a lot in this phenomenon, because what pushes whales to leave their private keys for an ETF is not tax optimization. But fear. After the recent hack of Coldcard Bitcoin Wallets, holding BTC yourself becomes a physical risk. And BlackRock is not alone in this dynamic:
- Bitwise’s threshold went from 100 to 50, then to $3 million;
- 21Shares, for its part, averages around 5 million;
- Morgan Stanley evaluates these conversions at 5-7% of the holdings of its bitcoin ETF.
BlackRock and Ripple: the marriage that no one announces?
Officially, nothing, but unofficially, everything. BlackRock has never said it works hand in hand with Ripple, except that its BUIDL fund is issued through Securitize. And Securitize supports Ripple… The circle is complete. Discreetly and without thunderous press release, but facts which accumulate. Concretely, this provides regulated management of tokenized assets, with the XRP Ledger to strengthen interoperability.
On the one hand there is Wormhole, the protocol which allows BUIDL to roam across several blockchains without losing its liquidity. On the other hand, Ripple is officially integrating it into its registry, to consolidate the fund’s multi-chain capabilities. And to shake things up, RLUSD, Ripple’s stablecoin, is now also Wormhole compatible. As a result, BlackRock recovers an additional entry point to the XRP infrastructure. This, without lifting a single finger. Discreet, efficient, strategic.
Two movements, one logic. BlackRock no longer sells crypto conviction, it now sells peace of mind, packaged and regulated. Is this a betrayal of the original spirit of Bitcoin (BTC)? Purists will say yes, without hesitation because for them, a wallet hack should never justify abandoning self-custody. Others, however, will respond that mass adoption has never been compatible with the requirement of “not your keys, not your coins”. There had to be a compromise somewhere… don’t you think?
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