BUIDL's Assets Under Management Reach $2.3 Billion as BlackRock Plans to Expand Tokenized Assets' Use as Collateral

Odaily report: BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company, is exploring expanding the application of tokenized assets from the crypto market to traditional finance, enabling them not only to serve as collateral but also to be used for payments. The company's tokenized money market fund BUIDL, launched in 2024, has seen its assets under management grow to approximately $2.3 billion. It has since launched related products in the United States and Europe, and in September of this year received approval to launch a HKD-denominated digital liquidity fund.

BlackRock is shifting its focus from issuing stocks, bonds, and money market funds on blockchain networks to improving how these assets are transferred and used as collateral. Through tokenization, investors can directly transfer their holdings to other investors or use them as trading collateral without first redeeming them for cash. Nikhil Sharma, a director on BlackRock's digital assets team, said that early users of tokenized funds were primarily crypto market participants, and the key going forward is to build bridging mechanisms so that traditional financial institutions can use tokenized products without having to build separate systems of their own.