There is a lot to not like about Blackrock. This could be considered the poster child for Wall Street mass manipulation of markets. The company has roughly $11 trillion in assets under management. It is an incredible figure when you think about it.

News came out that Blackrock recently bought ports on both sides of the Panama Canal, a move that greatly upset the Chinese. It laid out a cool $22.8 billion for the purchase.

One thing the company is doing is leading the Wall Street charge into tokenization. Whether this is a positive is unclear. However, no firm is doing more to bring this process to life. The tokenization of real world assets is on its radar.

Blackrock started this process a while back. Of course, it is the leader when it comes to the Bitcoin Spot ETF market. This was not tokenization but did provide a major boost to the crypto industry. It also, in my opinion, fed further into the hijacking of Bitcoin.

Now we see another milestone as the company expands its tokenized endeavors.

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Blackrock Leading The Way To Tokenized Securities With BUIDL

Blackrock took a major step a year ago when it introduced BUIDL. It was a stablecoin available to institutional investors, with a slight twist.

The BUIDL token is designed to offer a stable value of $1 per token, paying qualified investors dividends in the form of tokens representing U.S. dollar yield.

Unlike other issuers, which keep the interest payments earned on the asset backing, BUIDL pays that out to the investors. The payments are made in the form of the BUIDL token with the cash being fed into the fund. It is backed by US Treasuries and Repo contracts.

Naturally, Blackrock earns its management fees.

Another interesting component to this is the fact that BUIDL resides on Ethereum. Unlike JPMorgan which went private, Blackrock opted to use a permissionless chain for the tokenization. This could eventually lead into more DeFi applications tied to the token, which will be provided to other institutions.

As we can see, this is more exclusion, something that Wall Street specializes in.

That said, it is reported the fund crosses $1 billion in assets under management. This means it is the largest tokenized on-chain fund of US Treasuries.

BUIDL, launched in March 2024, was BlackRock’s first tokenized fund to be issued on a public blockchain. It offers qualified investors the ability to earn onchain U.S. dollar yields paid daily through dividends earned through its basket of short-term Treasury reserves. The interoperable BUIDL token is pegged to the U.S. dollar, meaning it operates like a revenue-earning alternative to stablecoins like USDT and USDC.

The entire tokenized Treasury market stands around $4.2 billion, meaning BUIDL has captured about a quarter of the market.

And so it goes with Wall Street.

Whenever it enters something, the numbers can get large rather quickly. It is likely we see massive growth in the tokenized asset market. At this point, we are dealing with proof-of-concept and infrastructure building. We can expect that others will enter the market, bringing in other assets.

Tokenization Is The Future

In my mind, there is little doubt that tokenization is the future. We are seeing a massive push from what I call the "hybrid system". This is where traditional financial entities enter crypto and basically take it over. The overwhelming size and access to resources provides them with a huge jump on the decentralized aspects of the industry.

This means that Wall Street is going to do a lot of heavy lifting. Tokenization of assets, whether via a fund such as BUIDL or through regulation that pushed more traditional assets into the realm (for backing), is underway.

It is a situation which requires a decision by the decentralized community. Do we let Wall Street hijack everything? As stated, I view Bitcoin as basically gone. Fixed money always pools and that is happening here. With Ethereum, we are seeing a similar situation as the idea of deflationary forces took hold, allowing Wall Street the opportunity to control a growing portion of the supply if it chooses to.

We have to realize the laws are going to favor these entities. Governments will push as much of the tokenization through the banking system as possible. It will not allow the decentralized world to engage with traditional finance, unless Wall Street is the one setting it up.

Even the most recent stablecoin legislation in the United States is framed in this manner. It is full on compliance, making each issuer adhere to the banking laws. Oversight comes from both the states and federal agencies.

The HODLers will not care since they only concern themselves with price go up. As long as they get their massive gains, all else be damned. They are not builders, instead looking for easy money. Obviously, the returns in crypto, such as evidenced by Bitcoin history, can be massive. However, riding a wave of Wall Street money is only going to recreate the same exclusionary environment.

If nothing else, Wall Street will keep it interesting.