BlackRock Tokenizes $311B of European Money Market Funds With JP Morgan's Kinexys

BlackRock has launched tokenized share classes for a range of European money market funds holding a combined $311 billion, its first on-chain fund access in Europe.

The 12 new share classes sit across six funds in the BlackRock Institutional Cash Series, covering euro, sterling and U.S. dollar strategies in both distributing and accumulating form. Tokens are minted on Ethereum using Kinexys, J.P. Morgan’s blockchain unit, which handles minting and burning and acts as the layer between on-chain activity and the traditional share register.

Each token represents a share in the underlying fund, and the official shareholder register continues to be maintained by the fund’s transfer agent. Smart contracts move holdings between approved investor wallets, which BlackRock said delivers round-the-clock peer-to-peer transferability and near real-time visibility.

“Today’s launches represent an important evolution in how investors access and manage cash, while helping modernise capital markets infrastructure,” Beccy Milchem, Global Head of Cash Distribution and Head of the International Cash Management business at BlackRock, said in a press release shared with Decrypt.

Kara Kennedy, global head of market development at Kinexys, noted that, “Tokenization has moved from concept to execution,” while BlackRock pointed to corporate treasury management, digital collateral and bank and wealth distribution channels as the use cases it expects the structure to open up.

The share classes are marketed to professional and qualified clients rather than retail investors, and are available in Bermuda, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

The underlying funds are public debt constant net asset value and low volatility NAV money market funds, structures regulated under Europe’s UCITS regime. BlackRock’s Head of Digital Cash, Hannah Winter, said the tokenized versions preserve the same standards on capital preservation, liquidity and risk management as the existing share classes.

BlackRock’s tokenization push

The launch lands a day after BlackRock issued tokenized money market funds recording ownership on Solana, Ethereum and Stripe’s Tempo, with Securitize as transfer agent, aimed at stablecoin reserve management.

The asset manager has been building toward this since BUIDL, the tokenized fund it launched on Ethereum in March 2024 with a $5 million minimum, which has since expanded across eight networks. Chief executive Larry Fink and COO Rob Goldstein have framed tokenization as “the next major evolution in market infrastructure.”

BUIDL now manages more than $2.6 billion. The ICS share classes launch against $311 billion in existing assets, though BlackRock has not said how much of that it expects to move on-chain.