BlackRock Expands Blockchain Money Market Fund Offering to Solana Platform, in Collaboration with Securitize

• BlackRock includes blockchain in Solana-powered currency fund
• Tokenization advances with BUIDL now on seven blockchains
• Solana and BlackRock Redefine Money Markets with Blockchain

Global asset management giant BlackRock is taking another significant step into the cryptocurrency space. On Tuesday, BlackRock’s technology partner Securitize announced the inclusion of a blockchain-based money market fund on the Solana network, which is known for its rapid growth and for being a direct competitor to Ethereum. This development comes exactly one year after the launch of the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Fund (BUIDL), which integrates the traditional functions of money market funds with the innovative blockchain-based registration and payment properties.

Investors who are already familiar with the crypto space now have the opportunity to allocate their funds to BUIDL across seven different blockchains, including Solana. The fund, which was initially made available on Ethereum, has managed to raise a steady stream of capital since its launch.

The move is part of a broader trend in the financial sector toward tokenizing assets. Tokenization involves converting traditionally “off-chain” financial assets, such as paper bonds or stocks, to an “on-chain” format by recording their existence on a blockchain. To date, BUIDL has accumulated a total of $1,7 billion in assets, including cash and Treasuries, and that figure is expected to surpass $2 billion by early April, according to a Securitize spokesperson.

Michael Sonnenshein, COO of Securitize, commented in an interview with Fortune about the transformative potential of money market funds thanks to blockchain: “We’re making them less boring.” He explained that the always-on nature of the cryptocurrency market, which operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, allows investors to enter and exit positions much more quickly than in traditional formats, where trading is limited to business hours.

Furthermore, the inherent volatility of the cryptocurrency market often requires traders to seek safe havens against sharp price fluctuations. Traditionally, stablecoins such as USDT and USDC have been used for this purpose, but they do not offer yield. This highlights the importance of new products that combine stability with the possibility of yield, such as blockchain-based funds offered by BlackRock and other financial institutions such as Franklin Templeton and Figure Markets.

Lily Liu, president of the Solana Foundation, also highlighted to Fortune the superiority of on-chain finance, which allows for a greater variety of operations with assets registered on the chain.

With the expansion of BUIDL to Solana, BlackRock continues to deepen its involvement in the cryptocurrency space, following the successful launch of a Bitcoin exchange-traded ETF in January 2024, which has now amassed nearly $40 billion in investment.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink predicted in January to CNBC: “ETFs are the first step in the technological revolution in financial markets. The second step will be the tokenization of every financial asset.”