Hedera Jumps 113% Amid BlackRock Confusion

One of BlackRock’s funds has been tokenized on Hedera, a distributed ledger akin to a blockchain, according to a Tuesday announcement. This news led to the price of Hedera’s HBAR token skyrocketing 113% in the 12 hours that followed the announcement, according to CoinGecko.

But now the price is dropping as more precise details emerge and BlackRock denies a direct link to the move.

Digital asset exchange Archax has expanded its range of tokenized fund shares to now offer BlackRock’s ICS U.S. Treasury money market fund (MMF). Archax’s previous offerings have been created on both the Hedera and Ethereum blockchains, but this new offering appears to be solely on Hedera.

But while the announcement prominently featured BlackRock, the investment giant clarified to Decrypt that it is not directly involved in the tokenization effort.

“We have not worked with Hedera,” a BlackRock spokesperson told Decrypt via email. “Archax distributes our product through tokenization and [is] using Hedera.”

However, this nuance apparently didn’t come through in the announcement. The reaction to the initial news was enormous, with many people believing that BlackRock were directly involved in the move. “BlackRock has officially launched tokenized funds,” one Twitter (aka X) user said. Another added, “How long until BlackRock are on the Hedera Governing Council?”

Graham Rodford, co-founder and CEO of Archax,explained on Twitter that “it was indeed an Archax choice to put on Hedera,” rather than the decision of BlackRock. While BlackRock didn’t select Hedera to tokenize its fund, Rodford said that BlackRock was aware that Archax was doing so, and agreed with the wording of the press release.

Rodford explained that Archax didn’t have to inform the investment manager that it was tokenizing its fund, but decided to do so as it wanted to maintain good relationships. 

HBAR’s value has pulled back in response to this news, dropping by 38% to $0.1301 since hitting its 24-hour high of $0.1832. 

Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, has been a vocal supporter of the tokenization of securities. The Wall Street titan made its first move into the world of crypto earlier this year with the announcement of “BUIDL,” a tokenized asset fund built on Ethereum—a move that Bernstein believes “brings legitimacy” to Ethereum.

Edited by Andrew Hayward