BlackRock signaled its growing ambition to bring digital technology to mainstream institutional finance, filing to launch a new share class of its $150 billion money market fund that is registered on a blockchain.
The world’s largest asset manager submitted paperwork to the US Securities and Exchange Commission this week to create a blockchain-based share class — labeled DLT, an acronym for distributed ledger technology — for its BlackRock’s BLF Treasury Trust Fund, a cornerstone of cash management.
DLT will seek to utilize blockchain technology to record share ownership or streamline certain fund operations for the money market fund, which invests in high-quality, short-term US Treasury securities. Bank of New York Mellon Corp. will manage the sale of these shares as an intermediary, for a minimum of $3 million.
BNY, one of the world’s largest custodians of traditional assets, will play a role in representing the ownership of the shares through the technology, a process known as tokenization. These will simply mirror the fund ownership and will be nonbinding.
Tokenization has become a growing trend on Wall Street as money managers seek to tap the boom in digital-asset interest. Essentially, it’s the process of creating digital representations of real-world assets — such as stocks and Treasury bills — on a blockchain, which makes it generally cheaper, faster and more transparent. In theory, the tokenization of funds is meant to offer instantaneous settlements as it seeks to replace traditional financial intermediaries that typically take hours, if not days, to process transactions.
“The official record of digital funds remains the traditional book-entry method, so these efficiencies aren’t yet gained,” said Bryan Armour, director of passive strategies research at Morningstar Inc. “This is a step toward incorporating blockchain technology in investments, but it’s not a new strategy or a fully tokenized offering.”
BlackRock declined to comment.
The DLT filing comes after the asset manager last year launched the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund or BUIDL, a tokenized fund. The company last year pushed for its money-market digital coin to become more widely used as collateral for crypto derivatives trades.
While regulators and policy officials weigh on new efforts to bring digital innovation to finance, the likes of BlackRock aren’t sitting idly, by seeking to bring tokenization to traditional assets. Still, the jury is still out on both the benefits of the technology and demand among mainstream investors, while some crypto diehards have charged that Wall Street institutions are seeking to co-opt the technology to generate fees. BlackRock is charging an expense ratio of 0.17% — with a fee waiver until June 2027.
“This is a tentative step in that direction,” said Noelle Acheson, author of Crypto is Macro Now newsletter. “I’m interested in where this will fit into the regulatory framework currently being sketched out.”
BlackRock is part of a growing list of financial firms like Franklin Templeton who are capitalizing on tokenizing their funds. The bullishness stems from Larry Fink, BlackRock’s chief executive officer, who has said that every financial asset will eventually be tokenized. He again highlighted this in his 2025 annual letter to investors.
“The world’s money moves through plumbing built when trading floors still shouted orders and fax machines felt revolutionary,” Fink wrote. “Tokenization changes all that.”
