BlackRock Launches Tokenized Asset Fund Backed by $100 Million in USDC Stablecoin

Investment titan BlackRock has taken a bold step into the future of finance by initiating a tokenized asset fund, as reported by CoinDesk. The fund, named BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, is set to operate from the British Virgin Islands and will be rolled out in collaboration with the tokenization specialist, Securitize. It has been kickstarted with a hefty $100 million investment in USDC stablecoin, leveraging the Ethereum blockchain.

This move follows BlackRock’s foray into the digital asset management realm, marked by the introduction of a bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) earlier this January. This ETF swiftly amassed over $15 billion in managed assets. Additionally, BlackRock had previously laid the groundwork for an ether (ETH) ETF. Larry Fink, BlackRock’s CEO, in a CNBC interview this January, hinted that these ventures are precursors to a broader embrace of asset tokenization, which he envisions as the industry’s inevitable trajectory.

The establishment of this new fund is a landmark achievement in the tokenization of tangible assets, a burgeoning field straddling the domains of digital assets and conventional finance. This innovative approach seeks to transplant traditional assets onto the blockchain, promising swifter transaction settlements and heightened efficiency. In the wake of this announcement, the native token of the tokenized real-world asset platform Ondo Finance, ONDO, witnessed a surge of up to 20%, with a 12% increase over the last day, outshining both the general CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) and bitcoin (BTC).

Sentiment: Positive