BlackRock (BLK), the asset management giant that oversees more than $13 trillion in assets, is ramping up its efforts to bring traditional finance (TradiFi) on-chain, seeking to play a larger role in tokenization as a way to unlock access to markets and streamline the way assets are traded.
The company’s teams are exploring how to use tokenization to make markets more efficient and accessible, with executives hinting at greater progress to come, CEO Larry Fink said on an earnings call after Tuesday’s earnings release.
“I think we’ll have some exciting announcements in the coming years about how we could play a bigger role in this whole idea of tokenization and digitization of our assets,” Fink said.
Fink said he sees digital assets – a market currently worth more than $4.5 trillion – growing “significantly” over the next few years.
BlackRock was among the first to issue Bitcoin in cash and ether Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States are the largest products of their type with $93 billion and $17 billion in assets under management (AUM), respectively.
The asset manager is also behind the market’s largest tokenized money market fund, the $2.8 billion BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), issued with tokenization specialist Securitize and available on various blockchains including Ethereum, Solana and Avalanche. BlackRock led Securitize’s $47 million fundraising last year by betting on tokenization gaining traction.
BlackRock’s assets under management reached $13.4 trillion in the third quarter of the year, up from $11.4 trillion the year before. The company reported $61 million in revenue from its digital asset products, just a fraction of the company’s total revenue of $6.5 billion, according to the earnings release.
Shares of BlackRock were up about 1.5% Tuesday morning.
Read more: BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF generates more revenue than its flagship S&P 500 fund
