--- title: "BlackRock" author: Mariusz Szyma date: 2026-09-24 lang: en canonical: https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/blackrock/ series: "Companies in stablecoins and RWA" series_part: 1/26 series_url: https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/ data_as_of: Sep 2026 --- # BlackRock BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, and its BUIDL fund is the reference product for tokenized US Treasuries. It matters because it showed that a tokenized fund can hold billions of dollars when the manager treats the blockchain as one more distribution channel for a business it already runs. ## At a glance | | | |---|---| | Founded | 1988 | | Headquarters | New York, United States | | Layer | Asset manager and fund issuer | | Key products | BUIDL (BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund); OnChain Shares class of BlackRock Liquidity Funds; BlackRock Daily Reinvestment Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle (BRSRV) | | Scale (with date) | BUIDL about 2.2 bn USD of total asset value and 107 holders on 23 September 2026 (RWA.xyz) | | Competes with | Franklin Templeton (BENJI), Ondo (OUSG), Superstate and Invesco (USTB), Circle (USYC) | ## What it does BUIDL opened on 20 March 2024. A holder owns shares in a British Virgin Islands fund company, and that company owns Treasury bills, cash and repurchase agreements. The token is the share. Each part of the work sits with a named firm: BlackRock manages the money, BNY Mellon holds the assets and counts the net asset value, PwC audits the fund, and [Securitize](/en/blog/companies/securitize/) keeps the register and places the shares. **A qualified purchaser** is an investor wealthy enough, under US securities law, to buy funds closed to the general public. BUIDL sells only to such buyers, with a 5 mn USD minimum. So the fund is built for institutions, crypto treasuries and other on-chain funds, not for retail wallets. That explains the holder count: about a hundred addresses hold more than two billion dollars. The fee depends on the chain. Since 13 November 2024 the Ethereum share class has charged 50 bps a year. On Aptos, Avalanche and Polygon it charges 20 bps, because those chains' foundations agreed to pay BlackRock the difference, as CoinDesk reported. A blockchain foundation paying for a famous fund on its network is a marketing budget, and the holder benefits from it. ## How it is different For BlackRock the marginal cost of BUIDL is close to zero. The firm already runs Treasury funds, custody relationships and compliance. An independent issuer charging 15 to 20 bps must cover the same fixed costs from scratch. That gap shapes the whole tokenized-Treasury market: the giants distribute an existing product, while the independents try to turn the same fee into a business. BlackRock also runs more than one register design. In BUIDL, an April 2024 analysis of the offering memorandum by Steakhouse Financial states that the transfer agent's register of members governs ownership, and the chain follows it. In the OnChain Shares class, filed on 8 May 2026, BNY Mellon keeps the official record of ownership on a public blockchain, with an off-chain map that links wallets to identities. BRSRV, filed the same day, uses Securitize Transfer Agent, LLC and a permissioned system tied to Ethereum, Tempo and Solana. One manager now runs two transfer agents and two legal answers to the question "is the chain the register". Other products use BUIDL as a building block. Ondo's OUSG holds it, and Sky's Spark allocated 500 mn USD of its first tokenization tender to it. BUIDL therefore works as a reserve asset for other on-chain products, which is a different job from being an investment for end users. ## Where it fits BUIDL is the running example of the course. [What a tokenized real-world asset actually is](/en/blog/rwa/what-is-an-rwa/) uses it to show what a holder legally owns. [Anatomy of a tokenized fund](/en/blog/rwa/the-stack/) prices each layer of its fee. [Who holds the keys](/en/blog/rwa/who-holds-the-keys/) reads its contract powers, and [Getting prices on-chain](/en/blog/rwa/oracles-and-nav/) follows its NAV feed, which [RedStone](/en/blog/companies/redstone/) signs and pushes. [RWAs in DeFi](/en/blog/rwa/rwa-in-defi/) covers its use as a reserve asset. Related profiles: [Securitize](/en/blog/companies/securitize/), [Ondo](/en/blog/companies/ondo/), [Franklin Templeton](/en/blog/companies/franklin-templeton/) and [Anchorage](/en/blog/companies/anchorage/), which custodies BlackRock's spot crypto ETFs. ## Risks and open questions The holder's claim runs against a BVI fund company, and the register binds if it disagrees with the chain. A contract bug is repaired from the transfer agent's books, not from the ledger. The contract carries a `seize` function gated to the transfer agent. I read it on Ethereum on 4 September 2026, and no timelock stands in front of seizure or upgrade. Every use emits an event, so it would be visible, but nothing delays it. The fee split is not public. How BlackRock divides 20 to 50 bps among itself, Securitize, BNY Mellon and PwC is disclosed by none of the four. Flows are lumpy. With about a hundred holders, one large redemption moves the total: BUIDL's value fell by about 14% in the thirty days to 23 September 2026, according to RWA.xyz. ## What to watch next - **OnChain Shares adoption**: a registered fund whose official record lives on a public chain is a stronger legal design than BUIDL's, and its uptake shows which model the manager prefers. - **BRSRV and the GENIUS Act**: the US stablecoin law takes effect by 18 January 2027 at the latest, and a vehicle built to hold stablecoin reserves could become a large buyer of tokenized Treasuries. - **Chain subsidies**: whether more foundations pay for a 20 bps class shows how much networks value an issuer's presence. - **Fee disclosure**: a public split of BUIDL's fee would answer the largest open cost question in the market. ## Sources - 🟢 RWA.xyz, BUIDL asset page, read 23 Sep 2026, https://app.rwa.xyz/assets/BUIDL - 🟢 BlackRock, "About BlackRock", https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/about-us - 🟢 Securitize, "BlackRock Launches Its First Tokenized Fund, BUIDL", 20 Mar 2024 - 🟢 SEC EDGAR, BlackRock Liquidity Funds, Form 485APOS (OnChain Shares), 8 May 2026, and BRSRV prospectus of the same date - 🟢 Author's on-chain read, BUIDL contracts on Ethereum, 4 Sep 2026 - 🟡 CoinDesk, on chain foundations paying BlackRock for a 20 bps BUIDL share class, 13 Nov 2024 - 🟡 Steakhouse Financial, analysis of the BUIDL offering memorandum, Apr 2024 - 🟡 CoinDesk and Yahoo Finance, "BlackRock's BUIDL, Superstate and Centrifuge Win Spark's $1B Tokenized Asset Windfall", 2025 - 🟡 The Block, "Top spot bitcoin ETF issuer BlackRock adds Anchorage Digital as custodian", Apr 2025, https://www.theblock.co/post/349997/top-spot-bitcoin-etf-issuer-blackrock-adds-anchorage-digital-as-custodian