💰 Blackrock’s 9-Figure Bet on Ethereum

Have you heard about the new Blackrock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund? 👂

With a starting AUM of $100 million, they’re already making massive waves by dipping their toes in the waters of blockchain. 🌊

🎯🔥 Rapid Fire Takeaways:

💎 BlackRock Creates Fund With Securitize, a Big Player in Real-World Asset Tokenization

🤖 Financial firms to increase DLT investment as much as AI, Broadridge survey finds

🏛️ ECB calls for experts to participate in digital euro rulebook workstreams

💰 Sygnum Tokenizes $50M of Fidelity International Fund as Matter Labs Moves Reserves to Blockchain

🏖️ UDPN opens digital currency sandbox for commercial, central banks

💳 Alipay trialing web3 discount program with Avalanche blockchain

⚖️ German regulator BaFin highlights overly detailed EU regulations such as MiCA

From a Larry Fink think to a full-fledged fund – all in under a quarter. ⚡

That’s too fast for a coincidence – BlackRock has been cooking. Let’s see what herbs and spices they’re working with. 🧑‍🍳🌶️

Big Names, Big Funds 📚

Remember earlier this year when Larry Fink called asset tokenization the first step in a techno-financial revolution? 💥

It turns out he wasn’t joking, and BlackRock is putting in some serious work to stake its claim in the future of finance. According to a recent SEC filing, the asset management giant is working with Securitize, a leader in the RWA space, on a new fund. 👀

Dubbed the Blackrock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, we know… next to nothing when it comes to definitive details. 🙈

But that doesn’t stop sly sleuths from surmising the situation. 🔍

It’s not yet specified in which digital assets this fund will invest, but $100 million in USDC moved from a Securitize deployer address to a new wallet. While not a smoking gun, that’s an interestingly large, round figure to move. 🧐

We’ll share more facts as they come to light, but this proves majors mean business when it comes to digital asset leaders like Bitcoin and Ethereum. 🔦

🌱 New Ecosystem, New Offerings

While some real-world assets soared on the news, tokenization giant Ondo Finance was independently flying on the heels of its own announcement. 🆕

See, Ondo is solving a problem they’re uniquely positioned to tackle. 🏈

While most famous for tokenizing short-term Treasury assets, Ondo’s OUSG tokens represent ownership in their Ondo I LP, which is short Treasury bonds. 

They quickly found that the settlement expectations of DeFi and the realities of TradFi, as it pertains to these short positions, are… incongruent, at best. 😣

Enter Ondo Global Markets, their unique approach to tokenizing traditional securities, with the goal of modularizing access to the existing financial system (also called TradFi) without fragmenting asset liquidity. 💽

It’s a bold attempt at squaring the circle of DeFi and TradFi, and with their compliant tokenization rails in place… it might just work. 🚀

Stay tuned for more updates as they unfold. 📺

中国 <3 代币化 ✌️

On the world’s largest landmass, China is taking retail CBDC integrations to the next level. 👑

The latest guide on how to use the e-CNY comes with English instructions, hinting at big moves. Now, whether you land in Hong Kong or Xiong’an, anyone with a grasp of English can pay with the nationally supported CBDC. 💴

And this is no paper tiger marketing move. It’s a serious push for adoption. 🐅

How do we know? Well, Alipay is officially trialing web3-based discount coupons for its 100 million+ users on one of Avalanche’s subnets. 🔺

At the same time, Hong Kong is inviting applicants to assist in the second phase of its retail CBDC program, the eHKD. 🏙️

If BlackRock’s timing seems intentional, imagine how the dance between corporate majors and State authority unfolds behind the scenes in Mainland China. CBDCs are happening here – significant public figures have encountered… challenges when pushing back against the Party. 🐼

🌐 Rest of World to Follow? 

The Singapore-based Universal Digital Payments Network (UDPN) has a more global and less top-down view of CBDCs, focusing on inter-jurisdictional interoperability. They’ve just kicked off their digital currency sandbox for central and commercial banks, with the goal of identifying cross-border CBDC pain points. 🏛️

Singapore has become a miniature giant in the tokenized real-world asset arena—it has over 8% of all publicly accessible tokenization initiatives based on the RWA World database. Factor in Project Guardian, and the city-state is only rivaled by Hong Kong on a tokenization-per-square-kilometer basis. ⛰️🤏

Token Fortress Europe 🏰

Whether it’s Lichtenstein’s proprietary asset tokenization framework via LCX, Italy tokenizing non-performing loans, or the Swiss tokenizing $113 million in bonds, the EU has been pulling exactly zero punches with tokenization. 🥊

The ECB’s call for expert contributions to the emerging digital euro workflow rulebook is the latest move to stifle regulatory uncertainty on the continent. Seven workstreams are listed, and each applicant must be nominated by a member of the Rulebook Development Group. While it’s an open call, you have to knock before entering. 🚪

Mirroring this call for clarity, Germany’s BaFin has opined that EU regulations on digital assets are too specific and not pragmatic enough. BaFin’s Thorsten Pötzsch called for “security, speed, and reduced bureaucracy” for digital assets, praising the MiCA law but frowning on the 57 specific guidelines and reporting requirements. On all fronts, efficiency for tokenization is heralded as a “must-have” for Europe. ⚖️

Continuing this week’s trend of small nations having a significant impact, Lithuania has granted Meld a banking license to broker tokenized real-world assets to retail investors. A first for Europe, the bank Meld will use its self-titled blockchain in collaboration with Swarm Markets, a German-regulated DeFi platform. While US citizens can’t buy tokenized versions of their own bonds, EU citizens now enjoy tokenized… well, almost anything! 🧰

Calls for simple tokenization regulations, new central bank workflows, and retail asset tokenization are all coming down the pipe at the same time. 🧺

Sounds like Europe is taking SAB121’s potential demise seriously and working to protect its comparative advantage. 👀

Funds Flow Freely 💰

With the world falling evermore in love with tokenization, you’d expect to see investments in the sector also going steady. 💌

You’d be right! Despite AI and LLMs taking the spotlight for the general public, financial firms plan to invest nearly as much money into blockchain and DLTs as they are to AI. Given the multifaceted nature of artificial intelligence, the ratio is a significant nod to the positive impacts of distributed ledger technology on the global financial system. 🤖

In terms of rounds, Figure just closed its $60 million Series A with the help of Pantera Capital and Jump Crypto and has big plans for its multi-party computation wallet and decentralized custody solutions. 🦘

Meanwhile, Brevan Howard closed a $69 million round for Berachain, co-led by Framework Ventures and Brevan Howard Digital. Berachain is a Cosmos-based, EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain that… 

Okay, let’s use human-speak to break down what all that even means. 😵

🌌 Cosmos-based means it uses technology from the Cosmos ecosystem, which isn’t natively compatible with Ethereum.

💻 EVM-compatible means “Ethereum virtual machine” compatible, which is short for “it ain’t Ethereum, but you can plug and play with Ethereum.” 

1️⃣ Layer 1 means it handles its own Sybil resistance – a self-contained system. You can think of it like a foundation – build stuff on top of it or add another foundation in the form of Layer 2 in case the first foundation gets too crowded. 

Put it all together, Brevan Howard cuts an 8-figure check, and we’re off to the races. 🏇

Oh, and Sygnum also just tokenized $50 million of a Fidelity International money market fund for Matter Labs using the zkSync network. Only $50 million? Probably nothing. 😏

Tokenization Takeaways 🥡

Now that’s a busy week! 📅

Blackrock kicks in the door with $100 million. 💥

Europe is positioning for a regulatory war of attrition with its old pal, the US, over digital asset custody domination. 🔒

All the while, Asia is ratcheting up global CBDC dominance. 🌐

And… while writing all this, someone sent some Tornado Cash-based Ethereum to Blackrock’s tokenized fund address, potentially spelling legal trouble based on how the SEC sees things. 🙈

Never a dull moment! 🚀

Why not wind down from the excitement by thumbing through the recently released ERC-3643 report on compliant tokenization from our friends at QualitaX? Our very own Ray Buckton contributed to help make the piece shine, so we know you’ll love it. 💎