A fake business registration for a BlackRock XRP trust fueled a market surge and subsequent fall.
The registration, still available on the website for Delaware’s Division of Corporations, mirrors past legitimate registrations by the asset management giant. It names BlackRock Advisors and Daniel Schweiger as registered agents.
BlackRock representatives have reportedly said that the filing is false, according to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.
“Confirmed by BlackRock by me. Some whacko must have added using BlackRock executive name etc. Cmon man,” Balchunas wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Ripple (XRP’s) price soared as much as 10% on the news before falling. In the wake of the denial, the price fell back to its pre-news level, around $0.65.
The news seemed to suggest that BlackRock was adding to its slate of crypto-related entities, which includes last week’s registration of an Ethereum trust.
The false news also comes on the heels of a similar incident, in which a fake headline about a BlackRock bitcoin ETF approval briefly spurred a market rally. To date, no spot bitcoin ETF has been approved.
Still, the moment spurred BlackRock CEO Larry Fink to comment on the “pent-up interest in crypto” in comments to the media in the wake of the false report.
“Some of this rally is way beyond the rumor, I think the rally today is about a flight to quality with all the…issues around the Israeli war now [and] global terrorism,” Fink said at the time.
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