BlackRock to Tokenize Shares of Its $150 Billion Treasury Trust Fund, SEC Filing Says
BlackRock to team up with BNY Mellon to develop new distributed ledger technology-based share class for fund.
Sam Reynolds | Edited by Shaurya Mulwa, Sheldon Reback Updated April 30, 2025, 2:26 PM Published April 30, 2025, 6:15 AM
Key points:
- BlackRock has announced a new class of digital shares for its $150 billion Treasury Trust using blockchain via BNY Mellon.
- The new shares will use blockchain to display ownership records, which could lead to wider adoption of digital assets.
- BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has highlighted the potential of tokenization and warned that the US could lose its financial leadership if it fails to control its debt.
BlackRock is preparing to integrate blockchain into the back office of one of its largest funds, filing to create a class of digital shares of its $150 billion Treasury Trust money market fund through BNY Mellon.
The new “DLT shares,” short for distributed ledger technology, will not include cryptocurrency. BNY Mellon, the fund’s exclusive distributor, plans to use blockchain to duplicate records of share ownership, an incremental step that could pave the way for broader adoption of tokenized money, digital assets, or blockchain-based settlement infrastructure in traditional finance.
In recent years, a number of companies have begun experimenting with creating blockchain-based representations of real-world assets (RWAs), rapidly moving the traditional financial sector into the crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) space. Earlier on Wednesday, Libre announced it would tokenize $500 million of Telegram’s $2.4 billion debt and move it onto the TON blockchain.
BlackRock’s Liquidity Treasury Trust is part of the Liquidity Funds suite and managed more than $150 billion in assets as of April 29. The DLT share class has a minimum investment requirement of $3 million for institutional investors, with no minimum amounts for subsequent purchases. The SEC filing is preliminary and subject to approval.
This isn’t BlackRock’s first foray into tokenization. Its BUIDL blockchain fund, created in partnership with Securitize, now manages over $1.7 billion in assets and recently expanded to Solana.
CEO Larry Fink has consistently emphasized his confidence in the long-term potential of tokenization and decentralized finance. In his 2025 annual letter to shareholders, Fink warned that the U.S. risks losing its financial dominance if it fails to control its debt — a vulnerability that could increase investor interest in alternatives like Bitcoin (BTC).
“If the U.S. doesn’t get its debt under control… America risks losing [its reserve currency status] to digital assets like Bitcoin,” Fink wrote. “Decentralized finance is a remarkable innovation. It makes markets faster, cheaper, and more transparent. But it also risks undermining America’s economic advantage.”
UPDATE (April 30, 7:29 UTC): Added third paragraph on tokenization trends, rewritten title.
