A BlackRock money market fund has been tokenized on the Hedera blockchain, leading to a remarkable surge of 96% in the price of the Hedera token (HBAR) within the last 24 hours. However, despite widespread speculation, the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, was merely “aware” of the move on-chain, rather than actively involved.
On April 23, the HBAR Foundation X shared a post, which was widely misinterpreted, suggesting that blockchain firms Archax and Ownera, along with BlackRock, had tokenized BlackRock’s ICS US Treasury Fund on the Hedera network. However, subsequent clarification revealed that BlackRock had no direct involvement in the tokenization process.
Chris O’Connor, founder of the Cardano Ghost Fund DAO, emphasized that BlackRock had “no involvement” with Hedera’s development and criticized the way the announcement was framed. Archax co-founder and CEO Graham Rodford clarified that it was an independent choice by Archax to tokenize BlackRock‘s fund on the Hedera blockchain, with all parties involved being aware of the decision.
The news of the tokenization led to a significant price surge for HBAR, reaching $0.175, a two-year high. However, despite this rally, HBAR is still down over 69% from its all-time high in September 2021.
The announcement coincided with the approval by the Hedera Global Governing Council to allocate 4.86 billion HBAR ($408 million) for further network development. This allocation is part of the HBAR Foundation’s strategy to strengthen its user base in 2024, following a successful 2023, which saw 33 billion transactions processed on the network.
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