BlackRock launches RWA investment fund with Securitize

The BlackRock CEO said spot ETF products are an important stepping stone in the company's RWA strategy.

The world's largest asset manager BlackRock has just established a new investment fund called "USD Digital Liquidity Fund". This information was found in a recent filing with the US Securities Commission (SEC).

BlackRock is preparing to offer a fund through a partnership with digital-asset specialist Securitize https://t.co/Dub30DhcJl— Bloomberg Crypto (@crypto) March 19, 2024

The fund was established in partnership with asset tokenization company Securitize and launched in the British Virgin Islands. The fund requires outside investors to deposit a minimum of $100,000.

While the SEC filing does not detail the assets the fund will hold, Securitize's presence suggests that the product may involve tokenization of real-world assets, also known as RWA – term representing ownership of assets through tokens on the blockchain.

The news is said to be the driving force behind ONDO (Ondo Finance) token prices in the past 24 hours. Compared to the most recent day, the token price has increased by more than 20%, while the entire market is deeply in the red because ETF buying pressure has plummeted.

Some observers also discovered that 100 million USDC on the Ethereum network was transferred to an address associated with Securitize, prompting speculation that this was an investment in a new fund.

At the same time, a token called BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) was created on March 5 on the Ethereum blockchain, according to data from Etherscan. BUIDL is limited to 100 tokens but has only one holder so far.

Today's move is BlackRock's next breakthrough on its cryptocurrency journey. This giant has been licensed by the US Securities Commission to list the Bitcoin spot ETF in January 2024.

Since then, BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) has amassed $15.5 billion in assets under management, making it the second largest spot Bitcoin ETF in the world. The company currently manages more than $9,000 billion in assets.

In an interview with CNBC earlier this year, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said ETFs are "just a stepping stone towards tokenization and I really believe this is the destination."

RWA is a potential narrative that is being welcomed by many large organizations. The basic idea of this segment is to convert traditional assets such as real estate, stocks, and commodities into tokens that can be stored and traded on the blockchain space.

In less than 2 months of launch, BlackRock iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) has accumulated more Bitcoin (BTC) than MicroStrategy.

According to statistics as of March 8 by BitMEX Research, BlackRock's Bitcoin spot ETF IBIT is holding 198,000 Bitcoin, approximately 13.5 billion USD in assets under management (AUM). This is a remarkable achievement after nearly 40 trading sessions.

[1/4] Bitcoin ETF Flow - 08 March 2024

All data in. $223m positive net flow for the week

The assets of the ETFs excluding GBTC are now over $28 billion, this is now larger than GBTC's assets for the first time pic.twitter.com/5BlBTu4WLn— BitMEX Research (@BitMEXResearch) March 9, 2024

# of Bitcoin purchased by $IBIT by day👇 pic.twitter.com/DdKtgaevX7— HODL15Capital 🇺🇸 (@HODL15Capital) March 9, 2024

Meanwhile, the famous public company holding the most Bitcoin in the world MicroStrategy currently owns 193,000 BTC. However, MicroStrategy's portfolio may have changed, as the company just issued an additional $700 million in bonds for the purpose of collecting more Bitcoin, as Coin68 reported last week.

Since being approved by the US government to launch on January 11, IBIT has been supplemented with hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin every day, and outperformed spot products listed in the same batch (with the exception of Grayscale's ETF which was transferred changed from GBTC). In addition, BlackRock also plans to buy ETF products issued by itself using the Global Allocation Fund.

Grayscale's GBTC has been "drained" of more than 200,000 Bitcoin since opening spot product business, but still has about 400,000 BTC remaining.

The Bitcoin spot ETF is the springboard that has pushed Bitcoin prices up more than 60% this year. The mainstay currency of the crypto industry has set a new peak at 69,990 USD on March 8, 2024. However, Bitcoin only managed to surpass the old peak a little and then immediately dumped strongly to the area of 66,500 USD, and is currently being traded for 68,373 USD.