BlackRock: Security Fears Are Driving Bitcoin Whales Into IBIT

Large bitcoin holders are swapping coins they guard themselves for shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) at a record pace, the firm’s head of digital assets said Monday, as kidnappings and hacks push security to the top of their list.

“The current moment is the highest we’ve seen at any point,” Robbie Mitchnick told Barron’s, adding that demand for the swaps “has sort of been one way — up.” Of all the reasons clients give, he said, “the single largest one is security and peace of mind.”

The trades are in-kind conversions. A holder delivers bitcoin to the fund through an intermediary and receives newly created IBIT shares, without first selling the coins for cash. BlackRock relies on Galaxy Digital, Talos and Virtu to handle the transactions, and those firms set the minimum size.

Barron’s put the volume BlackRock has seen at $3.6 billion, noting the real figure could be larger because the firm does not process every conversion itself. Mitchnick cited a bigger number in August, telling Bloomberg that IBIT had facilitated more than $5 billion of such swaps, up from more than $3 billion in October 2025.

In that August interview, BlackRock’s Mitchnick named the threats outright: “People see things happen in the outside world — whether it’s kidnappings, ransom, custody failures — that motivate them to make this switch for all or some of their holdings.”