Stablecoin issuer Circle has implemented smart contract support for investors in the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL).
The move provides BUIDL holders with an off-ramp to transfer their shares to Circle. USDC
-0.32%
According to a Released Thursday.
“USDC allows investors to quickly move away from tokenized assets, reducing costs and eliminating friction,” Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire said in a statement. “We are excited to offer this capability to BUIDL investors and provide them with the key benefits of blockchain trading through USDC availability.”
BlackRock previously invested in Circle’s $400 million funding round in April 2022, establishing a partnership between the two companies. By November 2022, Circle announced plans to deploy a portion of its USDC reserves into money market funds managed by BlackRock.
Blackrock’s Fund
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management company, launched Ethereum-based BUIDL last month. BUIDL is a tokenized liquid fund that invests, among other things, in US Treasury bonds and has its own token of the same name. BUIDL recorded $160 million in inflows during its first week and $288 million as of April 11, according to Etherscan data.
BlackRock tapped its token security issuance platform, Securitize, to “offer qualified investors the opportunity to earn U.S. dollar returns by joining funds through Securitize Markets,” the investment manager wrote in a press release.
As of January 2024, BlackRock had over $10 trillion in assets under management. BlackRock also issues IBIT, one of 11 spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on January 11, 2024.
USDC holds 28.9% of total Ethereum stablecoin supply as of April 10, according to The Block’s data dashboard. It is second only to Tether’s USDT, which accounts for 55.7% of the total supply.
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