After leaving financial and crypto market watchers reading tea leaves to divine its next big move, investment titan BlackRock spilled the tea late Wednesday on its tokenized asset fund. Dubbed ‘BUIDL,’ it will be built on the Ethereum network and is the company’s first tokenized fund issued on a public blockchain.
The BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund was first registered in the British Virgin Islands last year.
“BUIDL will offer investors important benefits by enabling the issuance and trading of ownership on a blockchain, expanding investor access to on-chain offerings, providing instantaneous and transparent settlement, and allowing for transfers across platforms,” BlackRock said in its announcement.
The fund’s initial investment minimum is $5 million, BlackRock said. That’s a significantly higher bar than what was specified in its SEC filing, published yesterday. The Notice of Exempt Offering of Securities did not specify the fund size but said the minimum investment accepted from any outside investor would be $100,000. Investor application values were to range from $1 to $100 million.
In order to bridge between Ethereum and traditional markets, BlackRock is enlisting Bank of New York Mellon, a global provider of investment management and investment services. BNY Mellon will serve as the custodian of the Fund’s assets and its administrator
BlackRock is also tapping Securitize Markets, LLC, an SEC registered transfer agent.
“Tokenization of securities could fundamentally transform capital markets,” Securitize co-founder and CEO Carlos Domingo said in the announcement. ”Today’s news demonstrates that traditional financial products are being made more accessible through digitization.”
As part of the deal, BlackRock made a strategic investment in Securitize, and BlackRock global head of strategic ecosystem partnerships Joseph Chalom has been appointed to the Securitize board of directors.
This is a developing story and will be updated as information becomes available.
