The world's largest investment company BlackRock has added five new members to its list of authorized partners. BlackRock currently controls 259,381 BTC.

The new partners included: ABN AMRO Clearing, Citadel Securities, Citigroup Global Markets, Goldman Sachs & Co and UBS Securities. Previous authorized participants included Jane Street Capital, JP Morgan Securities, Macquarie Capital and Virtu Americas. Thus, there are now nine organizations on the list. The investment company said that additional authorized partners may appear at any time.

Authorized partners play an important role in the creation and subsequent redemption of the share price of spot Bitcoin ETFs: they transfer funds into the trust fund.

BlackRock expects that expanding the list of authorized partners will be able to increase the liquidity and availability of securities of the spot Bitcoin Trust (IBIT). BlackRock's IBIT allows investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin without directly owning the digital asset.

Earlier, Robert Mitchnick, head of digital assets at the investment company BlackRock, speaking at the Bitcoin Investor Day conference in New York, said that Bitcoin is more like a precious metal than a risky asset.