BlackRock Bets Big on Blockchain—Files Plan to Tokenize $150B Treasury Fund
Wall Street’s quiet embrace of crypto just got louder. BlackRock—the world’s largest asset manager—dropped an SEC filing revealing plans to explore DLT-based shares for its $150 billion Treasury fund. No more paper trails, just blockchain rails.
Why it matters: When the $10 trillion gorilla starts tokenizing, the whole jungle takes notice. This isn’t some DeFi startup—it’s the institutional old guard cutting settlement times from days to minutes.
The fine print: The filing carefully avoids mentioning ’crypto’ (too spicy for regulators), opting instead for ’distributed ledger technology.’ Classic Wall Street—adopting the tech while sidestepping the politics.
Bottom line: If BlackRock’s move doesn’t convince skeptics that blockchain is eating traditional finance, nothing will. Just don’t expect them to admit they’re using the same tech as those ’risky’ Bitcoin ETFs they once warned about.
Tokenized treasuries already over $6 billion
The move by BlackRock highlights the continued exploration of blockchain technologies by traditional financial institutions to launch new products. BlackRock is already a key participant in this sector with its tokenized US Treasury product, BUIDL, being the biggest tokenized treasury product.
The firm is bullish on blockchain technology and tokenization with the chairman, Larry Fink, identifying the importance of tokenization in making financial products more accessible to investors.
According to data from rwa.xyz, BUIDL, which is a product of Securitize and BlackRock, currently has $2.556 billion in assets under management (AUM) and has seen a net inflow of more than $600 million in the last 30 days. With only 70 holders, its performance captures the solid interest in tokenized products, especially from institutional investors in the decentralized finance sector.
However, other tokenized treasury products are also attracting sizable interest, even if they are not growing on a similar level as BUIDL. Overall, the sector now has $6.16 billion in AUM from 44 products.
The next product with the highest AUM after BUIDL is Franklin Templeton’s BENJI, with $706.77 million. Others, such as Superstate USTB, ONDO USDY, and OUSG, and Circle USYC, also have over $400 million in AUM each.
Despite the growth of these products, many industry experts believe this is still an early stage, and the sector is primed for more growth. Standard Chartered experts predict that the tokenization market could be worth $30 trillion by 2030.
BlackRock IBIT sees record inflows
Meanwhile, BUIDL is not the only crypto-related product from BlackRock that has enjoyed a massively positive performance in recent times. The firm’s Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), IBIT, also recorded its second-largest daily inflow since launch, with $970.9 million on Monday.
Its inflows on that day contrast with the outflows from competing products, such as Ark 21 Shares ARKB, Fidelity’s FBTC, and Bitwise’s BITB. However, IBIT’s performance was still enough to offset these outflows and ensure $591.2 million in net Flow for Bitcoin ETFs.
The product, which has over $50 billion in AUM, has pulled in more than $4.5 billion in inflows since April 22 and accounts for 51% of the value of all spot Bitcoin ETFs.
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