Bitcoin and crypto prices have surged this week, climbing as traders brace for a major earthquake.
The bitcoin price has more than doubled over the last year, pushed higher by the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock’s embrace of bitcoin and crypto—with a surprise BlackRock spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) price shock just around the corner.
Now, as fears are swirling the U.S. dollar is on “the verge of a total collapse,” BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (Buidl) is being used to back a new stablecoin, described as a “key milestone” in the “$16 trillion by 2030” race to tokenize finance.
Crypto company Ethena, which earlier this year launched a so-called synthetic U.S. dollar stablecoin called USDe that’s swelled to a $2.6 billion circulating supply, has announced a new stablecoin called UStb that will invest its reserves in BlackRock’s Buidl via real-world asset tokenization platform Securitize.
“UStb will be fully backed by Blackrock Buidl in partnership with Securitize, enabling a separate fiat stablecoin product alongside USDe,” Ethena’s official X account posted.
“As the largest tokenized U.S. Treasuries fund with over $522 million in assets, Buidl provides UStb with a secure foundation,” Securitize’s account posted.
“This collaboration represents a key milestone in the evolution of tokenized finance, bringing together leading innovations in stablecoins and real-world asset tokenization.”
In May, BlackRock led a $47 million strategic investment in its Buidl partner Securitize, widely seen as a long-term bet on crypto, with the fund allowing investors within crypto ecosystems to earn dividends on the Treasury fund while keeping assets on-chain.
BlackRock, which manages over $10 trillion globally on behalf of clients, led the campaign last year to bring a fully-fledged spot bitcoin ETF to the U.S., winning approval for its IBIT and a fleet of other spot bitcoin ETFs in January.
In July, BlackRock’s chief executive Larry Fink said he had been “wrong” about bitcoin when he’d previously dismissed it as “an index of money laundering,” admitting bitcoin is “digital gold” and a “legitimate” financial instrument.
Fink revealed last year that he believes the tokenization of assets on blockchains will drive a “revolution” on Wall Street, as everything—from stock markets, pre-IPO stocks, hedge funds, infrastructure projects, commodities, alternate investment instruments and private credit—becomes tokenized.
“At BlackRock, we believe that tokenization has the potential to drive a significant transformation in capital markets infrastructure,” BlackRock’s global head of strategic ecosystem partnerships Joseph Chalom told Fortune in May. “Our investment in Securitize is another step in the evolution of our digital assets strategy.”
Earlier this month, a report from crypto company Chainlink found the current value of tokenized assets is almost $120 billion, with ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin, holding 58% of all tokenized assets.
In 2022, Boston Consulting Group found “the total size of illiquid asset tokenization globally would be $16 trillion by 2030,” while in 2021, the World Economic Forum estimated that “$867 trillion of value is ready to be disrupted by tokenization.”
This article was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
