Vanguard CEO Throws Cold Water on Crypto ETF Speculation
- Vanguard prefers assets in ETFs that generate cash flow, its CEO said in a recent interview.
- The comments come amid speculation about Vanguard’s crypto plans as inflows pour into rival firms’ crypto ETFs.
The Vanguard Group’s CEO Salim Ramji is dousing speculation that the company will issue a crypto ETF, even as flows into rival firms' spot Bitcoin funds surge and industry observers say it’s only a matter of time before the company issues one.
Without mentioning crypto ETFs, Ramji, who joined the world’s second-largest exchange-traded fund issuer almost exactly a year ago, told Morningstar in an interview that Vanguard focuses on investments that deliver cash flow, “or have the prospect of delivering cash flow.”
“We don’t have a gold ETF. We don’t have a silver ETF,” he said at the Morningstar Investment Conference, held in late June. “And so it’s a logical extension then as to why we don’t have ETFs in other things that don’t either deliver cash flow or have the prospect of delivering cash flow.”
BlackRock's IBIT Soars
Ramji’s comments come as Vanguard has issued a handful of fixed-income funds in recent weeks and as rival BlackRock has enjoyed huge success with its $76.7 billion iShares Bitcoin ETF Trust (IBIT), which Ramji helped launch in his previous role as global head of iShares, the world’s largest ETF issuer. IBIT has become the world’s largest crypto ETF, hauling in $52.8 billion in net inflows and nearly doubling in price over the past year.
IBIT’s success reflects Bitcoin’s acceptance into investing’s mainstream and has sparked speculation that Vanguard will seek to issue a crypto ETF simply to not miss out on gains and to meet demand for such a fund from its enormous base of retail and institutional clients.
It also comes as IBIT, launched in January 2024, has become BlackRock’s biggest fee generator, topping the $633.6 billion iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV), an index-tracking fund launched 25 years ago.
Ramji said he's cool with all of that.
“We’re OK not being everything to everybody,” he said. “And there are certain things [that] ... don’t fit our investment philosophy or we don’t think we have particular scale or expertise in. And so that’s where I’d put some of those types of ETFs in that bucket.”
Vanguard's 5 Biggest ETFs—Source: Factset
Perhaps worth remembering is that Ramji said in 2021 that BlackRock didn’t have current plans to issue a crypto ETF as rivals sought to launch such products.
