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The sell-off in the stock market didn’t cool down even on the second day following President Donald Trump’s announcement of global “reciprocal tariffs” on Apr. 2 dubbed the “Liberation Day.”
As China retaliated with reciprocal 34% tariffs on American imports on Apr. 4, the stock market took a further beating.
The S&P 500 dipped 4.61% to 5,147.51 points, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) slid 3.95% to 38,944.31 points, and the Nasdaq fell 4.79% to 15,757.01 points at the time of writing on Apr. 4.
BlackRock (NYSE: BLK), the world's largest asset manager, has been traversing a similar territory.
BLK was trading at $833.61 at press time, falling 6%. The stock has not shown an uptick since Apr. 2 and has dipped around 13% since then.
However, the stock market crash didn’t dissuade the asset manager from acquiring more Bitcoin. As per the on-chain analysis platform Arkham, BlackRock purchased $66 million in BTC on Apr. 4.
The firm has been offering a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the U.S. since January 2024. A spot Bitcoin ETF tracks the price of the cryptocurrency and allows investors to gain exposure to the asset without directly purchasing it.
The asset manager’s acquisition of additional Bitcoin on a day of massive sell-off only highlights the growing relevance the asset holds in the global market.
In fact, BlackRock representatives met the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) crypto task force staff on Apr. 1 to discuss potential crypto products in the future.
As of Apr. 3, the firm’s Bitcoin ETF held net assets worth more than $47 billion as per SoSoValue.