Tokenized BlackRock Money-Market Fund Shares Go Live on Avalanche

Securitize, the tokenization platform backed by BlackRock, began offering tokenized shares of a money-market fund on the Avalanche blockchain this week. The move puts a $1.5 trillion fund class inside a crypto trading interface for the first time at scale.

Tokenization wraps a real-world security in a digital token that lives on a blockchain. The token represents direct ownership of the underlying asset, not a derivative or a synthetic claim. Earlier attempts to bring stocks onto crypto rails relied on contracts-for-difference or IOUs that carried counterparty risk. Securitize's structure passes the fund's dividends and NAV changes directly to the token holder.

The immediate effect is that anyone with a crypto wallet and a compliant account can buy exposure to a BlackRock money-market fund without opening a brokerage account. The fund itself is the same SEC-registered vehicle. Settlement happens on-chain in seconds rather than the T+1 standard for traditional equities.

BlackRock has been the most aggressive among large asset managers in pushing tokenization. Its BUIDL fund, also tokenized through Securitize, now holds roughly $500 million in tokenized Treasury bills. The money-market fund token extends the same infrastructure to a broader investor base.

Crypto exchanges are the distribution channel. Several platforms that previously listed only crypto tokens now carry the Securitize-issued token alongside Bitcoin and Ether. That gives retail and institutional users a single login for both asset classes. The exchange handles KYC and compliance. The token handles settlement.

The regulatory framework is still patchy. Tokenized securities fall under existing securities laws in most jurisdictions. The trading venues themselves may not be registered as exchanges for those securities. Securitize operates under a broker-dealer license and uses transfer agents registered with the SEC. The exchanges listing the token rely on Securitize's compliance infrastructure rather than registering as stock exchanges themselves. The EU's MiCA regime, which took effect July 1, creates a parallel licensing path for crypto-asset service providers, though it does not directly address tokenized securities. MiCA Takes Effect: Crypto Firms Face New EU Rules From July 1

Liquidity is the open question. The money-market fund token has a single market maker and trades at a fixed $1 NAV. Price discovery is not the issue. For tokenized equities with floating prices – say, a tokenized Apple share – the liquidity would depend on the market maker's ability to arbitrage between the token and the underlying stock. That arbitrage requires the market maker to hold both the token and the real share, which adds balance-sheet cost.

Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo told Bloomberg that the company plans to expand into tokenized equities beyond money-market funds. The infrastructure for custody and settlement is further along than many assume, he said. The bottleneck is the gap between synthetic tokenization, where the token is a derivative, and direct ownership, where the token is the asset.

The next milestone is a tokenized equity that trades on a crypto exchange with real price discovery and two-sided liquidity. That would test whether the model works for volatile assets, not just stable NAV funds. No date has been set.