BlackRock (NYSE: BLK), the world’s largest asset manager, hit a record milestone as its first tokenized money market fund completed distributing $100 million in payouts.
It is a remarkable feat that demonstrates the cementing of the relationship between traditional finance and decentralized finance.
BlackRock’s BUIDL hits $100M milestone
In March 2024, the Wall Street giant launched the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL). It is a token that invests in short-term, USD-denominated assets, such as U.S. Treasury bills.
In simple words, tokenization is the process of using blockchain technology to digitally represent assets like stocks, Treasury bills, etc., to offer fractional ownership to prospective investors.
When investors trade BUIDL tokens, they earn dividend yield directly onchain. In short, they are earning income generated from the underlying assets that the BUILD tokens offer indirect exposure to.
First launched on the Ethereum blockchain, the fund is now available on Solana, Aptos, Avalanche, Polygon, and Optimism.
Securitize, a popular tokenization platform, is BlackRock’s partner which takes care of BUIDL’s onchain issuance and investor onboarding.
It was Securitize that announced the milestone on Dec. 29, as per which the fund has paid out $100 million in cumulative dividends since its launch.
BUIDL is the first tokenized Treasury to hit this historic milestone.
What it means is that investors holding tokenized funds, including U.S. Treasury bills, have received $100 million in lifetime payouts.
As per the onchain analytics platform RWA.xyz, BUIDL has a total asset value of $1.7 billion.
BlackRock already considers its spot Bitcoin ETF (Nasdaq: IBIT) among its top funds which has a cumulative net inflow of $62 billion, as of Dec. 26.
