Crypto Quill

The world’s largest asset manager shocked the crypto world on Tuesday by listing its $2.3 billion tokenized Treasury fund, BUIDL, on Uniswap, marking the first time a BlackRock product has ever traded on a decentralized exchange.

BlackRock, which manages over $11 trillion in assets, confirmed the move through its partner Securitize. The BUIDL fund, launched in March 2024 on Ethereum, instantly became the biggest tokenized U.S. Treasury product in existence. Now qualified investors can trade it directly on UniswapX, the permissionless protocol that powers the world’s largest DEX.

This is the moment traditional finance and DeFi officially merged.

Why This Changes Everything

The integration means institutions can now buy and sell shares of BlackRock’s Treasury fund 24/7 without intermediaries, using stablecoins or other crypto assets. Previously, even sophisticated investors needed to go through Securitize’s portal with KYC checks and banking hours.

Uniswap Labs co-founder Hayden Adams called it “the biggest on-chain finance moment since spot Bitcoin ETFs.” He revealed that BlackRock’s strategic partner, Securitize, proposed the listing and will purchase a basket of UNI governance tokens as part of the deal.

The move comes exactly one year after BlackRock CEO Larry Fink declared bitcoin “digital gold” and just eleven months after the firm launched BUIDL, which grew from $250 million to over $2.3 billion in assets under management.

Who Can Actually Trade It

Only whitelisted investors can participate. That means institutions and high-net-worth individuals who have already passed Securitize’s KYC/AML checks and are registered with the BUIDL fund.

Retail traders cannot buy BUIDL directly on Uniswap yet.

But the significance runs deeper than access. BlackRock just validated decentralized exchanges as legitimate infrastructure for institutional finance.

What Happens Next

The listing went live Tuesday afternoon. Early data shows millions in volume already flowing through UniswapX pools for BUIDL/USDC and BUIDL/ETH pairs.

This creates a direct bridge between Wall Street balance sheets and DeFi liquidity. Major players like Apollo, Hamilton Lane, and Arca are reportedly exploring similar integrations.

More importantly, BlackRock’s embrace of Uniswap sends a clear message to every traditional asset manager still sitting on the sidelines: the infrastructure is ready, the liquidity exists, and the biggest player just walked through the door.

The old excuse of “DeFi isn’t institutional grade” died on February 11, 2025.

This single move does more to advance tokenized real-world assets than years of pilots and proofs-of-concept combined. When the $11 trillion gorilla starts dancing with DeFi, everyone else has to follow the rhythm.

The future of finance just went live on Ethereum, and its name is written in BlackRock.