BlackRock has introduced Ethereum-based tokenized share classes for 12 European institutional money market fund offerings, extending blockchain settlement features to funds that managed a combined $311 billion as of June 30, according to the firm’s announcement. The structure allows approved institutional holders to transfer tokenized fund shares between whitelisted wallets around the clock while keeping the conventional fund register and transfer-agent process in place.
The rollout uses Kinexys by JPMorgan’s asset tokenization platform to connect Ethereum transactions with the operational systems that record legal ownership of the funds. Each blockchain token corresponds to an underlying share in a designated fund class, while the official shareholder register remains maintained through existing transfer-agent infrastructure.
That arrangement places the blockchain layer alongside established fund administration rather than replacing it. Institutions could gain faster visibility of eligible share movements and peer-to-peer transfer capabilities without moving the legal recordkeeping of a regulated money market fund entirely onto a public blockchain.
Twelve share classes across six liquidity strategies
The tokenized classes cover selected funds in BlackRock’s European Institutional Cash Series, or ICS. They include Euro Government Liquidity, Sterling Government Liquidity, U.S. Treasury, Euro Liquidity, Sterling Liquidity and U.S. Dollar Liquidity strategies.
BlackRock said the tokenized share classes are available in Bermuda, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Singapore and the United Kingdom. The availability applies only to the selected tokenized classes, rather than the full European ICS fund range.
Money market funds typically hold short-dated, liquid instruments such as government debt, cash and repurchase agreements. They are widely used by companies, banks and other large financial institutions for cash management, collateral needs and short-term liquidity planning. Adding tokenized share classes could make those holdings more portable inside systems that already use blockchain-based collateral, settlement or treasury tools.
The shares can move 24 hours a day between approved wallets through smart contracts, BlackRock said. A smart contract is software deployed on a blockchain that automatically executes transactions when preset conditions are met. Wallet approvals and transfer restrictions remain central to the model, reflecting the identity, eligibility and compliance requirements associated with institutional fund ownership.
Kinexys links blockchain transfers to fund registers
Kinexys by JPMorgan is providing the technology intended to synchronize activity on Ethereum with traditional fund records. This “translation layer” addresses a practical obstacle in fund tokenization: an onchain transfer alone does not automatically satisfy the administrative and legal processes required for regulated fund shares.
Under BlackRock’s structure, the blockchain token represents the economic interest associated with a fund share class, while the transfer agent continues to maintain the authoritative shareholder register. The split gives institutions an onchain mechanism for transferring eligible positions while preserving existing fund governance and recordkeeping.
BlackRock said the classes are designed to offer near real-time onchain visibility. That could be useful for institutions managing intraday liquidity or collateral, where firms often need a current view of available assets across several systems and counterparties.
The company identified corporate treasury management, digital collateral management, bank distribution channels and links with tokenized financial systems as intended use cases. It also said the infrastructure is designed to connect across 15 markets, though the announcement identified 13 jurisdictions where the initial onchain share classes are available.
Launch follows stablecoin-reserve fund products
The European fund rollout came a day after BlackRock announced two tokenized money market products designed for stablecoin reserve use. One, BRSRV, is a newly created fund. The other, BSTBL, tokenizes share classes in an existing Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund.
According to BlackRock, both stablecoin-reserve products invest primarily in cash, short-term U.S. Treasuries and overnight Treasury-backed repurchase agreements. Those assets are commonly used in reserve portfolios because they are designed to offer liquidity and relatively low price volatility compared with longer-dated bonds or riskier credit instruments.
Together, the announcements show BlackRock pursuing two related paths for tokenized cash products: institutional fund shares that can circulate among approved wallet holders, and funds positioned to support stablecoin reserve structures. The first focuses on how regulated fund interests can be transferred and viewed onchain; the second targets the asset side of stablecoin backing.
The approach also follows comments from Martin Small, BlackRock’s chief financial officer, during the firm’s second-quarter earnings call last month. Small discussed the company’s longer-term plans to expand access to digital-asset products through digital wallets, according to the supplied statement.
A measured expansion of onchain fund access
The launch does not mean BlackRock’s entire cash-management operation has shifted onto Ethereum. The tokenized classes cover selected funds within a much larger ICS lineup, and transfers remain limited to approved participants and wallets.
Those limits are likely to shape the immediate use of the products. The most direct applications are likely to involve institutions that already operate within permissioned digital-asset workflows, including treasury teams moving cash between entities, banks distributing eligible fund products, and firms posting tokenized collateral.
For those users, the value lies less in speculative cryptocurrency trading than in reducing the separation between money market fund holdings and blockchain-based financial infrastructure. A fund share that can be transferred between approved wallets at any hour could fit more easily into digital collateral systems or treasury processes that operate beyond traditional settlement windows.
BlackRock’s latest deployment therefore gives regulated European money market fund shares a controlled route onto Ethereum while retaining the fund-industry systems responsible for ownership records. The result is a hybrid model: onchain transferability and visibility at the transaction layer, with established transfer-agent controls continuing underneath.
Explore how traditional finance meets onchain tokenization in Toobit’s RWA deep dive: read more on tokenized RWAs.
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