BlackRock’s BUIDL Fund Hits $1B, Expands Blockchain Reach

• BlackRock’s BUIDL fund exceeds $1 billion in assets, highlighting the growing institutional interest in asset tokenization.
• BUIDL expands beyond Ethereum, integrating with various blockchains to improve accessibility and flexibility in digital asset investments.

BlackRock, in collaboration with Securitize, has effectively grown the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) to over $1 billion in assets under management (AUM), demonstrating that the asset tokenization trend is more than simply an experiment, but a significant movement in the investment industry.

JUST IN: 🇺🇸 BlackRock and Securitize’s $BUIDL fund surpasses $1 billion in assets under management. pic.twitter.com/bEGjLgwUra

— Whale Insider (@WhaleInsider) March 13, 2025

BUIDL’s growth signals a shift in institutional adoption

BUIDL’s assets under management have skyrocketed in recent months, largely thanks to the addition of the $200 million Ethena crypto protocol. This change shows the way in which blockchain technology is progressively merging with the traditional banking sector. Although the tokenization of assets was once just a futuristic concept, large companies are now starting to welcome it.

BUIDL itself is a tokenized fund designed to provide exposure to securities such as US Treasury bonds, cash and repos. The fund was initially only accessible on the Ethereum network. BlackRock extended BUIDL’s reach to additional blockchains, including Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche and Optimism via the Wormhole bridge, in order to provide flexibility and accessibility.

Now, with tokenization, investors can access these assets with a much more efficient process than if previous investments in treasury bills or bonds had to be made through slow and expensive traditional methods.

BlackRock and strategic expansion in the ETF sector

Meanwhile, BlackRock isn’t just busy with BUIDL. Last February, CNF reported that the company had converted its High Yield Municipal Fund into an active ETF, the iShares High Yield Muni Active ETF (HIMU), with assets worth 1.5 billion dollars.

The integration of municipal bonds into this ETF shows BlackRock’s efforts to broaden the scope of investment products based on government bonds.

BlackRock, on the other hand, continues to develop its approach in the crypto space, including with Ethereum and Bitcoin ETP products. However, not all of BlackRock’s moves have gone well.

The iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) saw an outflow of around $418 million on March 5, 2025. One could understand this phenomenon as a change in investors’ position or profit-taking after Bitcoin’s big run at the beginning of the year.

Larry Fink’s prediction and the future of crypto ETFs

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink was not silent in responding to the move. In a statement, he said that the price of Bitcoin would skyrocket to $700,000 if more institutional money put 2% to 5% of their portfolios into this cryptocurrency. Although it sounds ambitious, this prediction captures the hope for increased institutional adoption of the cryptocurrency.

This prediction also fits with State Street’s estimate that by the end of this year, crypto-based ETFs will exceed the combined assets of North American precious metals ETFs. If that happens, crypto ETFs will rank third among all asset classes in the $15 trillion global ETF market, behind bonds and stocks.

BlackRock’s ultimate plan is to include Bitcoin in its model portfolio through the iShares Bitcoin Trust, which currently holds a value of over 58 billion dollars.