The CEO of BlackRock reaffirms his belief in tokenization It is impossible to ignore the financial revolution promised by the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs). Digitization on the blockchain opens up many opportunities, both for market liquidity and for their openness to […]
BlackRock CEO reaffirms his belief in tokenization
It is impossible to ignore the financial revolution promised by the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs). Digitization on the blockchain opens up many opportunities, both for market liquidity and for their international accessibility at any time of the day or night.
This is a development strategy that global asset management leader BlackRock—with $13 trillion under management—has already largely implemented, notably with the launch of its BUIDL fund, which has been operational since last year. This is hardly surprising, given that its CEO, Larry Fink, believes it to be “the future of financial markets.”
This global market is currently estimated at $34 billion, of which BlackRock already captures more than 8% of the market share with an estimated $2.8 billion in activity. A large portion of this is in the tokenized Treasury bond sector, where the BUIDL fund alone represents 34% of the market share.
Larry Fink recently reaffirmed this commitment on the financial news channel CNBC. He expressed his conviction that “we are only at the beginning of the tokenization of all assets, from real estate to stocks to bonds.”
There is $4.1 trillion in capital in digital portfolios worldwide, much of it outside the United States. If we could tokenize an ETF—digitize it—we could bring investors who are just starting to invest in the markets, for example through cryptocurrencies, to more traditional long-term investment products for retirement.
Larry Fink
“The next wave of opportunities for BlackRock”
Of course, the BlackRock boss is being pragmatic, since his company owns the most popular Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs currently on the US market. Their tokenization could therefore, in his view, increase their attractiveness even within the cryptocurrency ecosystem, which has historically been wary of traditional finance.
This was also an opportunity for Larry Fink to point out that BlackRock owns “the largest tokenized money market fund” with BUIDL. These are all promising first steps that clearly herald others to come, given “the next wave of opportunities for BlackRock over the coming decades.”
I believe we have some exciting announcements coming in the next few years about how we might play a bigger role in this overall idea of tokenization and digitization of our assets.
Larry Fink
