Once Wall Street enters, it can move quickly.
This is certainly the case with Blackrock. This firm is quickly establishing itself at the center of the crypto-sphere. When it comes to institutions that are involved in crypto, Blackrock seeks to have all of them doing business with it.
Of course, this means more money.
BUIDL is a project that still has not received a great deal of attention from the wider crypto community. The reason might be the fact that this was designed for institutions. It is a stablecoin that is backed by US Treasuries. In this regard, it is similar to USDC or Tether. The difference is that Blackrock pays the interest on the Treasuries to the token holders, something the companies behind the other stablecoins omit.
It appears it is time for expansion.
Blackrock Expands BUIDL Token
Blackrock is branching out to other chains. No longer is it solely going to reside on Ethereum.
Asset management titan BlackRock is announcing the expansion of its proprietary BUIDL, the company’s on-chain money market fund , across five new blockchains.
According to an announcement by real-world asset tokenizing firm Securitize, BlackRock’s brokerage partner, BUIDL will be expanding to layer-1 blockchains Aptos (APT) and Avalanche (AVAX) as well as layer-2 scaling solutions Arbitrum (ARB), Optimism (OP), and Polygon (POL).
This is all part of a larger strategy. Blackrock is focused upon the tokenization of real world assets. This is something that it is getting involved with in a big way. It is likely we are looking at the future leader in this field.
As stated by Securitize chief executive and co-founder Carlos Domingo,
“We wanted to develop an ecosystem that was thoughtfully designed to be digital and take advantage of the advantages of tokenization.
Real-world asset tokenization is scaling, and we’re excited to have these blockchains added to increase the potential of the BUIDL ecosystem. With these new chains we’ll start to see more investors looking to leverage the underlying technology to increase efficiencies on all the things that until now have been hard to do.”
The firm is looking to make BUIDL the centerpiece of RWA and products built upon them. It is already talking to many exchanges regarding making BUIDL the collateral used for derivative contracts.
In other words, it is seeks to become one of the major crypto players going forward.
Wall Street Hijacking
The advantage Wall Street has is that, once it decides to get involved, it moves quickly. We see how much things changed since the approval of a Bitcoin Spot ETF. This was slow in coming but, once approved, things took off.
People are now forecasting when the totals will eclipse gold ETFs.
This was the first indication that things were shifting. Blackrock is now one of the largest holders of Bitcoin due to the popularity of its ETF. If the desire for BTC keeps growing, which is should, most entities will enter via and ETF rather than self custody.
Here is how Wall Street takes over.
Of course, the numbers relating to Bitcoin are peanuts compared to the real world asset totals. Naturally, we are dealing with an estimate, but we are talking about hundreds of trillions of dollars. This is before derivatives are built on top of them.
For example, global real estate is estimated to be roughly $300 trillion. We will not see everything tokenized, at least not for a while. However, the fact that we are dealing with such a large number means even a small percentage, once derivatives are added, could equate to that total.
The result is a tokenized system that is exclusionary.
Most of what Blackrock does is not open to the average investor. cryptocurrency is the one asset class that most people around the world can easily jump into. This provides them with some defense when inflation starts to run. We know, during these period, assets tend to rise in value. The challenge for most of the human population is they own little-to-nothing.
Cryptocurrency changes this. Anyone with a smartphone is able to accumulate some assets which can appreciate in value. The history of crypto is one where crypto tends to outpace all other asset classes.
Blackrock seeks to change that. It wants to put as much under its control as possible. Gary Gensler, chair of the SEC, seems to be aligned with this vision. His tenure was one where crypto was seemingly pushed into the lap of Wall Street.
Whatever takes place going forward, it is prudent to watch what Blackrock is doing. This company is not sitting still.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha