Investing giant BlackRock is interested in possibly adopting a leading crypto asset for use in the legacy capital markets.
BlackRock, the investing giant that managed $9.5 trillion in assets in the first quarter of 2022, is considering how USD Coin (USDC) can be utilized in capital markets after a successful $400 million funding round.
“In addition to its corporate strategic investment and role as a primary asset manager of USDC cash reserves, BlackRock has entered into a broader strategic partnership with Circle, which includes exploring capital market applications for USDC.”
In a Bloomberg interview, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire says that the strategic partnership with BlackRock will be transformative for the capital markets.
“This is about how we are upgrading the fundamental financial market infrastructure of the way dollars work in capital markets.
As we know today, the banking system doesn’t move at the speed of the internet. There’s counterparty risk, there’s settlement risk. There are all kinds of challenges that are there. And I think BlackRock plays an incredibly large role in capital markets, managing $10 trillion of assets and dealing with that infrastructure.”
According to Allaire, the adoption of the USDC stablecoin in the much larger traditional financial markets, relative to the crypto markets, would present an “enormous opportunity.”
“This is an opportunity to bring use cases for USDC. Certainly, there are major use cases today in digital asset markets, DeFi [decentralized finance], NFTs [non-fungible tokens], cross-border payments. But in core capital markets, we see an enormous opportunity…
I think there’s a belief in the opportunity in establishing dollar digital currency and private sector-led innovation and dollar digital currency. And I think BlackRock can be a huge partner for us as we try and establish that as a pre-eminent model that the US can really get behind.”
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