BlackRock (BLK), the world’s largest asset manager, is building on its recent expansion of tokenized cash offerings in the U.S. by tapping into a combined $311 billion of assets under management in European money market funds in a sign of the growing appeal of holding real-world assets on blockchain technology.
BlockRock unveiled 12 new tokenized share classes based on six funds across 15 European markets. The funds, which comply with the European Union’s UCITS regulations, include sterling, euro and dollar share classes, the asset manager said Tuesday. The move comes one day after the firm added two tokenized cash offerings in the U.S.
CEO Larry Fink has repeatedly championed tokenization technology as a way to modernize financial markets. The tokenized real-world asset market has grown more than 200% over the past year to over $30 billion, according to rwa.xyz, while Citi projects tokenized securities could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030.
The tokenized funds are designed for corporate treasurers who already use money market funds to manage operating and reserve cash, as well as at asset managers and investment consultants across traditional and digital markets, BlackRock said.
“This is what investors want in cash management: size and liquidity,” the company’s global head of cash distribution and head of the international cash management, Beccy Milchem, said in an email. “The tokenised share classes add a new digital holding and transfer capability to funds supported by established investment, dealing and liquidity-management processes.”
The Institutional Cash Series money market funds were tokenized in collaboration with JPMorgan using the bank’s Kinexys platform. The onchain share classes are available in Bermuda, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Singapore, and the U.K.