BlackRock’s Jay Jacobs calls DeFi and TradFi merger ‘The Great Convergence’

The world’s largest asset manager has a name for what’s happening between Wall Street and crypto. BlackRock is calling it “The Great Convergence,” and if the data behind the label is any indication, the two financial universes are colliding faster than most people expected.

Jay Jacobs, BlackRock’s US Head of Equity ETFs, coined the term during an appearance on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction podcast. His thesis is straightforward: the era of DeFi versus TradFi is over. The era of DeFi and TradFi is just getting started.

The IBIT pipeline effect

Here’s the number that makes the whole “convergence” argument concrete: roughly 75% of investors who bought BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) had never owned an ETF before. Not a single one. These were crypto-native individuals whose entire investing experience lived on-chain, and IBIT became their first taste of a traditional wrapper product.

After parking capital in IBIT, many of those same first-time ETF buyers started shopping the rest of BlackRock’s shelf. They moved into the firm’s S&P 500 ETF (IVV), its gold fund (IAU), and its AI-focused ETF (BAI). In English: people who came for the Bitcoin stayed for the index funds.

IBIT launched in January 2024 as part of the initial wave of spot Bitcoin ETF approvals in the US.

From ‘versus’ to ‘and’

Jacobs framed the cultural shift with a specific metaphor. He described the old relationship between traditional finance and decentralized finance as adversarial, a “versus” dynamic where each side viewed the other with suspicion. The new framework, in his telling, is better represented by ampersands.

The shift isn’t purely philosophical. Pre-IPO perpetual futures trading volumes have surged from $1B to $22B recently, a 22x increase that reflects growing appetite for hybrid financial products that straddle both worlds.

What this means for investors

For crypto-native investors, the convergence thesis suggests that familiarity with traditional financial products is becoming a competitive advantage. The 75% figure from IBIT illustrates this clearly. People who entered through Bitcoin are now building diversified portfolios across asset classes.

For traditional investors, the message is different but equally pointed. When BlackRock frames its Bitcoin ETF as a gateway to its entire product suite, it’s signaling that digital assets are a permanent fixture of mainstream portfolio construction. The firm isn’t treating IBIT as a novelty product. It’s treating it as a customer acquisition channel.

The competitive landscape is shifting too. BlackRock has a first-mover advantage in converting crypto investors into multi-asset clients. But Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, and others are building similar pipelines.