5
Apr, 2025
BlackRock’s BUIDL fund explained: Why it matters for crypto and TradFi
Altcoin News, Bitcoin News, Crypto Analytics, Crypto Industries & Currency Updates
What is BlackRock’s BUIDL fund?
BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Fund, BUIDL, is BlackRock’s first tokenized money market fund. It enables these traditional financial products to be traded as cryptographic tokens on blockchains.
A money market fund is a mutual fund that invests in high liquidity, short-term debt instruments. These funds aim to provide investors with a place to park money temporarily, returning a level of income without massive capital appreciation. They typically include cash, cash equivalents and high-credit rating debt securities like US Treasurys.
Blackrock is the world’s largest asset manager. It now provides blockchain-based money markets via blockchains like Solana and Ethereum. Essentially, the firm has taken the idea of traditional money market funds and combined it with the distributed ledger and payment characteristics of blockchains.
The fund has reported explosive growth, rocketing from $667 million to $1.8 billion of assets under management in just three weeks. As of March 31, 2025, the fund continues to attract a steady inflow of capital, with an increasing number of crypto-savvy investors choosing to park their funds in BUIDL via the seven blockchains it currently operates on:
- Ethereum
- Solana
- Aptos
- Arbitrum
- Avalanche
- Optimism
- Polygon
The BUIDL launch marks one of the most significant institutional moves into mixing traditional finance (TradFi) and blockchain-based products. It signals another step in Blackrock’s crypto strategy towards mainstream financial acceptance of crypto and blockchain.
This institutional crypto adoption from a respected asset manager with trillions of dollars of assets under management further legitimizes the space and may trigger a new wave of capital inflows from institutional adoption.
How does BUIDL work?
BUIDL is a tokenized fund. It invests in dollar-equivalent assets like US Treasury bills, cash, and repurchase agreements. Investors buy and sell BUIDL tokens, which are pegged to the dollar and pay dividends daily to an investor’s wallet as new tokens every month.
Investors can enjoy earning yields while retaining the security of traditional finance instruments. It is a form of real-world asset tokenization (RWA) that involves creating a digital representation of an asset.
This digital representation is a blockchain-based token, similar to cryptocurrency, that can be traded on relevant decentralized networks. Traditional asset transfers usually take days to settle and have poor capital efficiency. Tokenized assets allow near-instant trades and settlements to speed up financial processes while enabling better automation for reduced costs.
A hybrid approach creates a TradFi and crypto bridge to give investors the best of both worlds with the stability of regulated financial products and the efficiency of blockchain.
Did you know? Part of Sky’s (formerly MakerDAO) $1 billion RWA allocation announced in 2024, Superstate secured a chunk (estimated $200 million–300 million) in March 2025, pushing its AUM past $400 million. The tokenized Treasury market’s $5 billion milestone supports this growth.
Why BUIDL matters for crypto
The BlackRock BUIDL fund ushers in the next level of institutional legitimacy to the crypto ecosystem. Regulated institutions and entities can now seamlessly enter the blockchain space with confidence, especially with proven chains like Ethereum and now Solana.
The fund demonstrates real-world practical use cases for blockchain beyond speculative investments. For many years, crypto investments were reserved for those brave enough to trade tokens directly or learn the intricacies of decentralized finance (DeFi).
The latter was often a risk too far for their precious investments. Adding to this, ambiguous regulation meant that these options were completely off-limits for institutional fund managers like BlackRock.
For years, crypto has been seeking the approval and legitimacy of traditional financial institutions. BUIDL isn’t just acceptance; it’s the green light for active participation from the world’s biggest financial player. The fund’s early success may be a potential catalyst for a swell of institutional investment as mainstream adoption grows.
BUIDL’s impact on traditional finance (TradFi)
The BUIDL fund is a high-profile example of how traditional finance products can be improved with tokenization and blockchain.
BUIDL demonstrates the design possibilities available to further tokenize money markets and RWAs.
“In the year since BUIDL’s launch, we’ve experienced significant growth in demand for tokenized real-world assets, reinforcing the value of offering institutional-grade products onchain,” said Carlos Domingo, CEO and co-founder of Securitize, the company partnered with Blackrock to bring BUIDL onto the Solana blockchain. “As the market for RWAs and tokenized treasuries gains momentum, expanding BUIDL to Solana — a blockchain known for its speed, scalability, and cost efficiency — is a natural next step.”
While the money market usually enables investors to earn yield from idle cash, traditional funds have trading limitations like limited operating hours. The introduction of blockchain versions gives 24-hour access and liquidity to investors.
Blackrock isn’t the only player in tokenized funds, either. Franklin Templeton released a similar blockchain product, which had grown to over a $600 billion market cap by February 2025, while Figure Markets launched an interest-bearing stablecoin called YLDS.
Did you know? Beyond traditional institutions, BUIDL has drawn interest from blockchain-native entities eager to leverage its onchain utility. A standout early investor is Ondo Finance, which reallocated $95 million from its own tokenized short-term bond fund into BUIDL within a week of its March 2024 launch.
Benefits of BUIDL for investors
Traditional money market funds have been in operation for decades, but BUIDL introduces several benefits, including speed and accessibility, to bring these financial products into the modern world of digital assets.
- Improved speed and efficiency: With a BUIDL crypto investment, settlement times are reduced compared to traditional finance. This eases administrative burdens and costs while delivering overall operational efficiency.
- Enhanced liquidity and accessibility: Investors are able to buy and sell their fund tokens 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There are no closed trading times or weekends so investors can always retain liquidity to enjoy better capital efficiency.
- New yield generation: With BUIDL seeking a stable $1 value per token, investors get daily accrued dividends paid into wallets as new tokens on a monthly basis. This may provide higher returns compared to traditional fixed-income investments.
- Transparency and security: All of BUIDL’s transactions and holdings are tokenized and registered on the relevant blockchains. This means everything is transparent for investors to enjoy more visibility and accountability of their assets.
Risks and challenges of BUIDL
BUIDL’s rapid growth is a positive sign for innovation between TradFi and blockchain. Still, it also introduces risks that many investors might not be familiar with. This is an important consideration for money markets as factors like liquidity and technological vulnerabilities are evolving.
Understanding these new elements is essential for investors:
- Liquidity issues: Liquidity is critical for any successful asset class, especially with derivative products. BUIDL does have some liquidity concerns with the investor base currently consisting of qualified investors, neglecting wide market adoption.
- Technical vulnerabilities: The foundation of BUIDL leverages Ethereum’s smart contracting capabilities to tokenize US Treasurys. Smart contract vulnerabilities here could expose the fund to failures and hacks.
- Market manipulation: Cryptocurrency is notoriously volatile, often due to market manipulation as profiteers run tactics like wash trading and pump-and-dump schemes. As a new tokenized product, BUIDL could be vulnerable to this type of risk with its limited trading volumes and liquidity.
- Counterparty risk: Blackrock is a secure financial institution with credibility. But counterparty risk is significant in crypto. For instance, if an exchange listing BUIDL faces financial distress, it could impact the token’s reliability.
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5
Apr, 2025
Wall Street’s one-day loss tops the entire crypto market cap
Altcoin News, Bitcoin News, Crypto Analytics, Crypto Industries & Currency Updates
The United States stock market lost more in value over the April 4 trading day than the entire cryptocurrency market is worth, as fears over US President Donald Trump’s tariffs continue to ramp up.
On April 4, the US stock market lost $3.25 trillion — around $570 billion more than the entire crypto market’s $2.68 trillion valuation at the time of publication.
Nasdaq 100 is now “in a bear market”
Among the Magnificent-7 stocks, Tesla (TSLA) led the losses on the day with a 10.42% drop, followed by Nvidia (NVDA) down 7.36% and Apple (AAPL) falling 7.29%, according to TradingView data.
The significant decline across the board signals that the Nasdaq 100 is now “in a bear market” after falling 6% across the trading day, trading resource account The Kobeissi Letter said in an April 4 X post. This is the largest daily decline since March 16, 2020.
“US stocks have now erased a massive -$11 TRILLION since February 19 with recession odds ABOVE 60%,” it added. The Kobessi Letter said Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement was “historic” and if the tariffs continue, a recession will be “impossible to avoid.”
Source: Anthony Scaramucci
On April 2, Trump signed an executive order establishing reciprocal tariffs on trading partners and a 10% baseline tariff on all imports from all countries.
Trump said the reciprocal tariffs will be roughly half the rate US trading partners impose on American goods.
Related: Bitcoin bulls defend $80K support as ‘World War 3 of trade wars’ crushes US stocks
Meanwhile, the crypto industry has pointed out that while the stock market continues to decline, Bitcoin (BTC) remains stronger than most expected.
Crypto trader Plan Markus pointed out in an April 4 X post that while the entire stock market “is tanking,” Bitcoin is holding.
Source: Jeff Dorman
Even some crypto skeptics have pointed out the contrast between Bitcoin’s performance and the US stock market during the recent period of macro uncertainty.
Stock market commentator Dividend Hero told his 203,200 X followers that he has “hated on Bitcoin in the past, but seeing it not tank while the stock market does is very interesting to me.”
Meanwhile, technical trader Urkel said Bitcoin “doesn’t appear to care one bit about tariff wars and markets tanking.” Bitcoin is trading at $83,749 at the time of publication, down 0.16% over the past seven days, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Magazine: XRP win leaves Ripple a ‘bad actor’ with no crypto legal precedent set
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5
Apr, 2025
SEC paints 'a distorted picture' of USD-stablecoin market — Crenshaw
Altcoin News, Bitcoin News, Crypto Analytics, Crypto Industries & Currency Updates
US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner and vocal crypto critic Caroline Crenshaw has accused the US regulator of downplaying risks and misrepresenting the US stablecoin market in its newly published guidelines.
However, many in the crypto industry see the SEC’s decision as a step in the right direction.
In an April 4 statement, Crenshaw, who is widely known for opposing the spot Bitcoin ETFs, said that the SEC’s statement on stablecoins contained “legal and factual errors that paint a distorted picture of the USD-stablecoin market that drastically understates its risks.”
Crenshaw disagrees, crypto industry applauds
Under the new SEC guidelines, stablecoins that meet certain criteria are now considered “non-securities” and are exempt from transaction reporting requirements.
Crenshaw disputed the accuracy of the analysis made by the SEC in arriving at that decision. She pushed back on the SEC for reiterating issuer actions “that supposedly stabilize price, ensure redeemability, and otherwise reduce risk.”
Source: David Sacks
The SEC said that “albeit briefly, that some USD-stablecoins are available to retail purchasers only through an intermediary and not directly from the issuer.”
Crenshaw argued this was misleading. She said:
“It is the general rule, not the exception, that these coins are available to the retail public only through intermediaries who sell them on the secondary market, such as crypto trading platforms.”
“Over 90% of USD-stablecoins in circulation are distributed in this way,” Crenshaw added.
Meanwhile, many in the crypto industry expressed optimism over the decision.
Token Metrics founder Ian Ballina said it “feels like a clear step in focusing on what really matters in the crypto space.”
Crypto industry says positive step, just late
Vemanti CEO Tan Tran said he wished the SEC reached this point three years ago, while Midnight Network’s head of partnerships Ian Kane said it “feels like progress for crypto folks trying to play by the rules.”
Crenshaw said it is “also grossly inaccurate” for the SEC to reassure users that an issuer can handle unlimited redemptions just because its reserves match or exceed the value of the supply.
Related: Stablecoins’ in bull market’; Solana sputters: VanEck
“The issuer’s overall financial health and solvency cannot be judged by the value of its reserve, which tells us nothing about its liabilities, risk from proprietary financial activities, and so forth,” Crenshaw said.
She explained that stablecoins always carry some risk, particularly during market downturns.
It comes only weeks after stablecoin issuer Tether was reportedly engaging with a Big Four accounting firm to audit its assets reserve and verify that its USDT stablecoin is backed at a 1:1 ratio.
On March 22, Cointelegraph reported that Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the audit process would be more straightforward under pro-crypto US President Donald Trump.
Magazine: XRP win leaves Ripple a ‘bad actor’ with no crypto legal precedent set
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4
Apr, 2025
Crypto stocks down, IPOs punted amid tariff tumult
Altcoin News, Bitcoin News, Crypto Analytics, Crypto Industries & Currency Updates
Cryptocurrency firms felt the heat from US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff rollout this week as market turbulence sent share prices tumbling and foiled initial public offering (IPO) plans.
From exchanges to Bitcoin (BTC) miners, crypto stocks suffered as much, if not more, than shares of other companies — despite the industry’s warm relationship with the US president.
On April 2, Trump announced he was placing tariffs of at least 10% on practically all imports into the United States and adding additional “reciprocal” tariffs on some 57 countries.
Since then, major US stock indices — including the S&P 500 and Nasdaq — tumbled by roughly 10% as traders braced for a looming trade war.
Bitcoin miners sold off on Trump’s tariff news. Source: Morningstar
Related: Bitcoin ‘decouples,’ stocks lose $3.5T amid Trump tariff war and Fed warning of ‘higher inflation’
Sharp selloffs
Crypto exchange Coinbase — a prominent ally of Trump during the November US elections — experienced a similarly severe sell-off, with its stock price dropping by roughly 12% during the same period, according to data from Google Finance.
Bitcoin miners are also taking a hit. The CoinShares Crypto Miners ETF (WGMI) — which tracks a diverse basket of Bitcoin mining stocks — has lost roughly 13% of its value since immediately prior to Trump’s April 2 announcement, according to data from Morningstar.
Even Strategy, one of the best-performing stocks of 2024, wasn’t immune. Its share price has fallen by around 6% on the news, Google Finance data showed.
According to Reuters, investment bank JPMorgan has raised its estimated odds of a global economic recession in 2025 to 60% from 40% previously.
“Disruptive U.S. policies have been recognized as the biggest risk to the global outlook all year,” JP Morgan reportedly said.
“The effect … is likely to be magnified through (tariff) retaliation, a slide in U.S. business sentiment and supply-chain disruptions.”
Strategy’s shares also dropped this week. Source: Google Finance
IPO delays
The impact of US tariffs hasn’t been limited to stock price volatility. Stablecoin issuer Circle has reportedly paused plans for a 2025 IPO, citing market turbulence.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Circle is “waiting anxiously” before taking further steps after filing to take the company public on April 1.
It is among several companies — including fintech Klarna and ticketing service StubHub — reportedly considering altering or shelving IPO plans.
One exception may be Bitcoin itself, which some analysts say is finally “decoupling” from the broader market.
Bitcoin’s spot price has held above $82,000 this week, even as US equities markets collapsed.
Magazine: Unstablecoins: Depegging, bank runs and other risks loom
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