BlackRock Inc (NYSE: BLK) is the world’s largest asset manager with $10 trillion in assets under management (AUM). Now, the finance titan prepares to launch a tokenization fund, seeding $100 million in USDC on the Ethereum Network.
The intention materialized on March 19 in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund. Notably, the document mentions Securitize as the ‘sales compensation recipient,’ which is a leading real-world asset (RWA) tokenization enterprise.
BlackRock’s fund will limit the minimum investment to $100,000 and estimates $525,000 in sales commissions, according to the filing.
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Interestingly, on-chain analysis identified a seed investment of $100 million in USDC to the tokenization fund, as reported by CryptoSlate. In particular, the company is supposedly holding the amount in the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain using Circle’s USD stablecoin.
BlackRock’s interest in tokenization and DeFi
Previously, Larry Fink, CEO at BlackRock, had already manifested interest in assets tokenization.
First, the CEO highlighted the exciting developments happening in the digital assets space, mentioning BlackRock was exploring the “tokenization of stocks.” This happened on March 17, 2023, in his annual letter to the company’s investors.
Later, Fink appeared in an interview for Bloomberg Television on January 12, 2024, explaining an “architectural change” for BlackRock. On that note, Larry Fink said they were “anticipating the next move,” which will be the tokenization of financial assets.
“And that means, every stock, every bond, will have its own basically cusip. It’ll be on one general ledger. (…) But the most important thing, we can customize strategies through tokenization. (…) We would have an instantaneous settlement. Think about all the costs of settling bonds and stocks, but if you had tokenization, everything would be immediate. (…) So, we believe this is a technological transformation for financial assets.”
— Larry Fink
This vision is shared by Securitize, reportedly with $400 million invested in RWAs by over 500,000 investors.
In conclusion, the giant assets manager is now ready to officially launch its tokenization fund and immerse in the technology revolution that is decentralized finance (DeFi) and Web3. Yet, crypto native investors question if BlackRock will really embrace the decentralization aspect of it, or try changing the environment.
The cryptocurrency market now speculates on which infrastructure cryptocurrencies will benefit from this expected massive adoption increase.
