BlackRock CEO Larry Fink Eyes Bigger Role in Tokenization

BlackRock (BLK), the asset management giant overseeing more than $13 trillion of assets, is ramping up efforts to bring traditional finance (TradiFi) onchain, seeking a bigger role in tokenization as a way to unlock access to markets and streamline how assets are traded.

Teams across the firm are exploring how to use tokenization to make markets more efficient and accessible, with leadership hinting at bigger moves ahead, CEO Larry Fink said during an earnings call following its earnings release Tuesday.

“I do believe we have some exciting announcements in the coming years on how we could play a larger role on this whole idea of the tokenization and digitization of our assets,” Fink said.

Fink said that he sees digital asset — a market currently worth over $4.5 trillion — growing “significantly” over the next few years.

BlackRock was among the firsts to issue spot-based bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the U.S., and are the largest products of their kind with $93 billion and $17 billion in assets under management (AUM), respectively.

The asset manager is also behind the largest tokenized money market fund on the market, the $2.8 billion BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) issued with tokenization specialist Securitize and available across various blockchains including Ethereum, Solana and Avalanche. BlackRock led Securitize’s $47 million fundraising round last year betting on tokenization gaining traction.

BlackRock’s AUM grew to $13.4 trillion in the third quarter of the year, up from $11.4 trillion in the previous year. The firm reported $61 million in revenue from its digital asset products, only a fraction of the company’s total revenue of $6.5 billion, per the earnings release.

BlackRock shares traded around 1.5% higher during morning trading on Tuesday.