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How BlackRock’s New Fund on Ethereum Got a Very Crypto Welcome

Carlos Domingo, founder and CEO of Securitize, gives the scoop on why Blackrock’s new fund had to launch early and has a suggestion for how to handle dustings of Tornado Cash ETH.

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On Wednesday, BlackRock, the world's leading asset management firm, announced the launch of a tokenized investment fund, the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity (BUIDL) Fund, developed in collaboration with Securitize.

Carlos Domingo, founder and CEO of Securitize, discusses the launch of the fund, which is native to the public Ethereum blockchain and aims to bring an institutional-grade cash management product to crypto institutions, offering faster token issuance, redemption, and transferability.

Learn more: What Is Real-World Asset (RWA) Tokenization? A Beginner's Guide

He also talks about how Blackrock has embraced crypto, how the launch of the fund was “front run” by crypto Twitter, and how Blackrock will deal with issues such as the fund being dusted with ETH tainted by sanctioned Tornado Cash ETH.

Show highlights:

  • What the BUIDL fund is, its essence and objectives
  • How the fund rewards its users, with a system similar to crypto airdrops
  • Whether they were worried about the regulatory aspects of bringing this product on-chain.
  • Securitize's role in the partnership with BlackRock
  • How much money flowed into the fund on the first day and who the target investor is
  • Why BlackRock decided to build this product on Ethereum
  • What BlackRock's attitude towards crypto is, according to Carlos
  • How the launch of the fund was front-run by crypto insiders
  • How a wallet associated with the fund received unintended funds from North Korean tied wallets and whether Ethereum should implement a mechanism for addresses to approve funds that are sent to i
  • Whether the contract is secure and what steps Securitize is taking to increase the safety of the users
  • The roadmap for the partnership between BlackRock and Securitize

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Guest

Carlos Domingo, Founder and CEO of Securitize

Previous appearance on Unchained: Could Securitize Democratize Access to Different Asset Classes?

Links

Previous coverage on Unchained of real-world assets:

The Catalysts for This Crypto Bull Market: AI, DeFi, Real World Assets?

The Chopping Block: Will Tokenizing RWAs Finally Click This Time?

MakerDAO Has Brought in Real World Assets. Is It Worth the Risk?

BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity (BUIDL) Fund

The Block: BlackRock to launch tokenized investment fund with Securitize

Unchained:

Wallet Associated With BlackRock’s Tokenized Fund Spammed With Unsolicited ETH From Tornado Cash

Wallet Associated With BlackRock’s New Fund Receives Memecoins and NFTs


Unchained Podcast is Produced by Laura Shin Media, LLC. Distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Michele Musso and Executive Producer is Jared Schwartz.

HOST

Laura Shin

Laura Shin is a crypto journalist, host of the Unchained podcast, and author of “The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze” (Public Affairs, 2022). Formerly a senior editor at Forbes, she was the first mainstream journalist to cover crypto full-time, and her podcasts and videos have had more than 15 million downloads and views. Shin has spoken about cryptocurrency at places such as TEDx San Francisco, the International Monetary Fund, Singularity University and the Oslo Freedom Forum.

She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with Honors from Stanford University and has a master of arts from Columbia University’s School of Journalism. She lives in New York City.

Laura Shin