I was listening to a recent conversation with Larry Fink, and I thought, this person’s view of the market is truly profound. Speaking from the position of Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, where he manages $12.5 trillion, it doesn’t feel like mere corporate strategy—it feels like you can see a picture of the future of the entire financial market.

What was especially striking was his point that it was the personal computer that truly changed Wall Street. In 1983, it was introduced into the mortgage lending division, which created the ability to restructure cash flow. This marked the beginning of the securitization process. Back then’s technology helped build the foundation of today’s finance.

What Larry Fink emphasized in particular was the importance of learning from failure. At age 34, he suffered a loss of $100 million, and the team spirit that had existed up to that point collapsed in an instant—without that setback, it’s hard to imagine that a company like BlackRock would have been born. I think his obsession with developing risk management tools also comes from this experience.

His observation that AI and tokenization will significantly change future investing and asset management is also interesting. BlackRock established an AI lab at Stanford University in 2017, and it is investing in developing optimization algorithms. While managing assets of $12.5 trillion and handling enormous volumes of transactions, the technology innovations are actually bringing him back to the roots of responsibility.

The integration of the private equity market is also accelerating. After acquiring BGI in 2009, iShares expanded from $340 billion to nearly $5 trillion. The acquisition of Prequin was also carried out at one-third the cost of other peer companies. In other words, advances in technology are promoting a freer allocation between listed assets and unlisted assets.

And then there’s the shift in stance toward Bitcoin. In 2017, he criticized it as “a currency for money laundering and theft,” but during the pandemic, his view changed 180 degrees. It seems the turning point was the story of women in Afghanistan receiving pay in Bitcoin under Taliban control. Larry Fink now calls Bitcoin a “fear asset.” He holds it out of concerns about national security and currency depreciation, recognizing its value as a hedge against an uncertain future.

He was also refreshingly candid about the decline of the active management industry. If active investing truly worked, ETFs wouldn’t have grown so rapidly. It suggests that the ability to uncover information the market doesn’t fully understand will become essential for investors going forward.

At the core of Larry Fink’s leadership philosophy is daily learning and giving it his all. Even after 50 years in the industry, he strives to do his best every day. Humility is that authority and influence are earned day by day, not taken for granted. That mindset is probably what helped BlackRock grow into the world’s largest asset management firm.