BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said Monday that a rally in the price of bitcoin triggered by a false news report about the approval of a spot ETF served as an example of the "pent up interest in crypto."

Fink, who said that he couldn't comment on the specifics of his own firm's pending application for a spot bitcoin ETF, said he'd been hearing "from clients from around the world about the need for crypto." 

"Some of this rally is way beyond the rumor," Fink said in an interview on Fox Business. "I think the rally today is about a flight to quality, with all the issues around the Israeli war now, global terrorism. I think there's more people running into a flight to quality, whether that is in Treasuries, gold or crypto, depending on how you think of it. And I believe crypto will play that type of role, as a flight to quality."

Bitcoin's price surged to almost $30,000 earlier in the day after a Cointelegraph post on X said the proposed BlackRock ETF had been approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The post was later removed, and Cointelegraph apologized for what it said was "a tweet that led to the dissemination of inaccurate information."

While bitcoin declined from its daily peak after the false report was debunked, the world's biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization held onto some gains, rising 4.8% over the past day to $28,505 at 4:44 p.m. ET, according to CoinGecko. It's up 7.4% over the past month, and a solid 47.4% over the past year amid excitement over the prospect of a spot ETF. 

Bitcoin as digital gold

Fink has in recent months become a proponent of bitcoin, repeatedly highlighting its role as a sort of "digitizing gold."

The SEC last month said it was instituting additional proceedings to determine whether proposed spot bitcoin ETFs from big name asset managers including BlackRock, Invesco, Valkyrie and Fidelity should be approved or disapproved, in apparent additional delays that will add at least another month to the review processes underway. 

"Careful what you read on the internet," the SEC wrote Monday evening in a post on X. "The best source of information about the SEC is the SEC."

(Updates with SEC post.)