BlackRock has put $311 billion of European money market funds onchain, launching 12 tokenized share classes across six UCITS-compliant funds in 15 markets. The move follows a U.S. expansion announced one day earlier and signals the asset manager's push to make its largest cash products tradable on blockchain rails.
The European rollout
The tokenized share classes span sterling, euro and dollar denominations and are available in Bermuda, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Singapore and the U.K. BlackRock said the funds comply with the European Union's UCITS regulations and represent a combined $311 billion of assets under management across the six underlying Institutional Cash Series funds.
JPMorgan's Kinexys rails
The onchain share classes were tokenized in collaboration with JPMorgan using the bank's Kinexys platform. BlackRock did not disclose whether the tokenized units sit on a public blockchain or a permissioned ledger, nor did it specify the custody arrangement for the underlying assets.
The investor pitch
“This is what investors want in cash management: size and liquidity,” Beccy Milchem, global head of cash distribution and head of international cash management, said in an email. She said the tokenized classes add a digital holding and transfer capability to funds supported by established investment, dealing and liquidity-management processes. The target audience includes corporate treasurers who already use money market funds for operating and reserve cash, as well as asset managers and investment consultants across traditional and digital markets.
Market context
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. BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink has repeatedly championed tokenization as a way to modernize financial markets. The European launch arrives one day after the firm added two tokenized cash offerings in the U.S., including onchain shares of an existing fund and a new daily reinvestment stablecoin fund.