BlackRock is launching its tokenized treasury fund on Uniswap, making it the latest major financial institution to move into decentralized finance, Fortune reported on Wednesday. The Wall Street giant also invested in the Uniswap ecosystem as part of the deal.
The move, developed in partnership with tokenization company Securitize, will allow investors to trade shares of BlackRock’s BUIDL fund online using UniswapX technology.
Hayden Adams, founder of Uniswap Labs, 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 world’s largest asset manager ($14 trillion in assets) and BUIDL is their first tokenized fund. This collaboration uses Uniswap’s market structure to power on-chain trading for BUIDL investors, based on Ethereum,” Adams said.
Trading will initially be limited to qualified buyers and approved liquidity providers, meaning only a small group will participate at first. The setup is designed to test how traditional assets work on decentralized platforms.
BlackRock and Uniswap executives 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 are working on: bringing the trust and regulatory standards of traditional finance to the speed and openness that DeFi is known for,” said Carlos Domingo, CEO of Securitize. “For the first time, whitelisted institutions and investors can access technology from a leader in decentralized finance to trade real-world tokenized assets like BUIDL with self-custody.”
The news sent Uniswap UNI token up 40%, from $3.2 to close to $4.6, before settling at around $3.8, per on-chain data.
