BlackRock is launching its tokenized treasury fund on Uniswap, making it the latest major financial institution to step into decentralized finance, Fortune reported Wednesday. The Wall Street giant has also invested in the Uniswap ecosystem as part of the deal.
The move, developed in partnership with tokenization firm Securitize, will allow investors to trade shares of BlackRock’s BUIDL fund onchain using UniswapX technology.
Uniswap Labs’ founder Hayden Adams said in a statement that the strategic collaboration with BlackRock and Securitize to enable BUIDL trading supports their ongoing efforts to create faster, more efficient markets with better liquidity for participants.
“BlackRock is the largest asset manager in the world ($14T aum) and BUIDL is their first tokenized fund. This collab uses Uniswap’s market structure to power onchain trading for BUIDL investors, settled on Ethereum,” Adams stated.
Trading will initially be limited to qualified purchasers and approved liquidity providers, meaning only a small group will participate at first. The setup is designed to test how traditional assets function on decentralized platforms.
Leaders from BlackRock and Uniswap say the collaboration demonstrates the growing overlap between traditional finance and crypto, and could accelerate the tokenization of real-world assets.
“This is the unlock we’ve been working toward: bringing the trust and regulatory standards of traditional finance to the speed and openness for which DeFi is known,” said Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo. “For the first time, institutions and whitelisted investors can access technology from a leader in the decentralized finance space to trade tokenized real-world assets like BUIDL with self-custody.”
The news sent Uniswap’s UNI token up 40%, from $3.2 to close to $4.6, before it settled around $3.8, per on-chain data.