BlackRock Denies Tokenizing Funds on Hedera Hashgraph

BlackRock has officially stated that it has “no commercial relationship” with Hedera Hashgraph and has not chosen the platform to tokenize any BlackRock funds, including shares of its $22 billion money market fund.

The price of Hedera’s token (HBAR) surged over 100% on Tuesday following an announcement by the HBAR Foundation on X, claiming that blockchain firms Archax and Ownera had tokenized BlackRock’s ICS U.S. Treasury Fund on Hedera.

BlackRock Hasn’t Partnered with Hashgraph

However, some misinterpreted the post to suggest that the firm played an active role in the tokenization effort. In response, a spokesperson from the firm confirmed that this was not the case.

“BlackRock has no commercial relationship with Hedera nor has BlackRock selected Hedera to tokenize any BlackRock funds.”

Since its peak at $0.176 on April 24, HBAR has fallen 32.8% to $0.1134 as of the time of writing, according to CoinGecko.

Direct Communication with Public

The spokesperson emphasized that the company will communicate directly with the public regarding the evolution of its digital asset strategy.

The HBAR Foundation’s announcement garnered significant attention, with over 2.9 million views and 3,200 reposts. However, some cryptocurrency influencers misunderstood the message.

“BLACKROCK JUST TOKENIZED ONE OF THEIR MONEY MARKET FUNDS ON HEDERA,” said Mason Versluis to his 189,000 X followers.

Archax CEO Weighs In

Archax CEO Graham Rodford later clarified on X that it was his firm’s decision to put shares of BlackRock’s money market fund on Hedera. Rodford explained during an interview with crypto YouTuber Jesus Martinez that Archax had clients interested in investing in the fund.

Rodford clarified, “Archax had clients that wanted to invest in the BlackRock money market fund. When they expressed an interest, we opened an account at BlackRock so that we could.”

Good Relationship with BlackRock

“With most of the investments we make, we want to tokenize them. We told them [BlackRock] we were going to and then just out of the good relationship with them we said ‘hey we’re putting out a press release, you guys happy to check it?’ — so they checked it and gave their views on it,” Rodford further explained.

Rodford emphasized that Archax has been leading the project and that the firm’s involvement was limited to checking the press release.

Despite the price pump, HBAR is still down over 78% from its September 2021 all-time high of $0.57, according to CoinGecko.