BlackRock has begun offering tokenized share classes for select European money market funds that together manage $311 billion, extending the world’s largest asset manager’s blockchain push from a niche pilot toward its core institutional-cash business. The firm announced the move on Tuesday, according to a Bloomberg report.
What BlackRock Launched
The tokenized shares apply to select funds in BlackRock’s Institutional Cash Series, its European money market fund range. Each digital token represents a share in the underlying fund and can be transferred around the clock directly between approved digital wallets, the firm said — a departure from the fixed dealing windows that govern traditional fund shares.
One point worth stating plainly, because much of the coverage blurs it: the $311 billion figure refers to the total assets in the fund range receiving the new share class, not the amount being tokenized. Only a share class is moving on-chain, and the tokenized portion begins small, growing as institutional investors opt in. The significance is the scale of the franchise now wired for tokenization, not an overnight shift of $311 billion onto a blockchain.
Why JPMorgan Is in the Picture
The most notable structural detail is the partner. BlackRock is using JPMorgan’s Kinexys platform to handle the tokenization and to act as transfer agent — the entity that maintains the official record of who owns which shares. That places two of the largest names on Wall Street on the same on-chain cash rails, with a competitor’s blockchain infrastructure underpinning BlackRock’s product.
It also marks a different technology stack from BlackRock’s US tokenization work, which has leaned on Securitize and, more recently, BNY Mellon. The European launch signals BlackRock is willing to mix providers by jurisdiction rather than standardizing on a single tokenization engine.
From a $2.5B Pilot to the Core Cash Business
BlackRock’s tokenization effort began in March 2024 with BUIDL, its first tokenized money market fund, built with Securitize on Ethereum. BUIDL has since grown to roughly $2.5 billion and become a benchmark asset for on-chain yield and collateral. The European move is a step up in ambition: rather than a standalone digital fund, it applies tokenization to an existing, far larger institutional cash range.
The backdrop is a fast-growing but still-small sector. The tokenized real-world asset market has climbed to roughly $30 billion to $37 billion over the past year, with tokenized US Treasuries around $16 billion, according to industry tracker rwa.xyz. Money market funds have become a focal point because they pair blockchain-based transferability with regulated, yield-bearing assets backed by Treasury bills and short-term paper—distinct from stablecoins. Third-party forecasts remain bullish but unproven: Citi has projected tokenized securities could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030.
A Companion to the US Launch
The European debut lands a day after BlackRock expanded its tokenized cash strategy in the US, where it launched an on-chain share class for its Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund on Ethereum and a new reserve vehicle aimed at stablecoin issuers. Taken together, the two launches show BlackRock building tokenized-cash options across both major markets within a single week — and doing so through different partners on each side of the Atlantic. Whether the tokenized share classes attract meaningful assets, rather than remaining a small sleeve of a large fund, is the open question the launches leave unanswered.
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