BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has created a new tokenized asset fund, according to a March 19 SEC report. submit.
The initiative – called the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund – is registered in the British Virgin Islands and developed in partnership with San Francisco-based Securitize, a company focused on asset tokenization.
The technical details of the fund and which asset classes it plans to tokenize were not disclosed in the filing and remain unclear. On-chain data shows that the fund has an initial capital of $100 million USDC on the Ethereum blockchain.
The companies have not yet made a public announcement and have not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.
RWAs
The creation of the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund reflects the increasing interest in the tokenization of real-world assets. This emerging sector aims to combine the capabilities of digital assets with traditional finance to streamline the settlement process and improve transaction efficiency through blockchain technology.
The market reacted positively to the fund’s announcement, with a notable increase in the value of ONDO, the native token of Ondo Finance, a platform that enables the tokenization of real assets.
The token was trading at $0.5 at the time of writing, up 12% in the past 24 hours despite the broader market crash, according to data from CryptoSlate.
With this new venture, BlackRock has positioned itself at the forefront of integrating digital assets with traditional financial services, potentially setting a trend for more institutional investment in blockchain technology.
BlackRock’s crypto journey
The Digital Liquidity Fund is the latest step in BlackRock’s broader journey into the digital asset industry, following the launch of its spot Bitcoin ETF – IBIT – in January. The ETF has achieved record performance since launch, quickly attracting more than $15 billion in assets under management.
The company also has an Ethereum ETF application in the pipeline and is considered bullish on both crypto and the underlying blockchain technology that enables tokenization.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink recently highlighted the strategic importance of BTC and ETH ETFs as precursors to broader adoption of tokenization in the financial sector. He said these products would open the door for a significant shift towards integrating digital assets into conventional financial practices.