BlackRock puts 311 billion dollars of money market funds on Ethereum
BlackRock introduced twelve tokenised share classes for six money market funds holding 311 billion dollars in assets between them. The tokens run on Ethereum via J.P. Morgan's Kinexys and are open only to eligible institutional investors in fifteen markets.
What has been announced
On 4 August 2026 BlackRock announced twelve tokenised share classes for six of its money market funds from the ICS range. Together those funds managed 311 billion dollars as at 30 June 2026.
They are ICS Euro Government Liquidity, Sterling Government Liquidity, US Treasury, Euro Liquidity, Sterling Liquidity and US Dollar Liquidity. The tokens are issued on Ethereum, via Kinexys — the blockchain platform of J.P. Morgan.
‘Tokenised money market funds allow us to offer high-quality short-term investments in a digital form, with the same standards around capital preservation, liquidity and risk management,’ said Hannah Winter, head of Digital Cash at BlackRock.
What a token is here, exactly
Each token represents an underlying fund share. The official share register continues to exist and is maintained by the fund's transfer agent; the blockchain sits on top of that rather than taking its place.
That distinction matters. This is not a fund built on a blockchain, but an existing fund whose shares can also be transferred in token form. The gain is in the transfer: it can happen outside office hours, with a near real-time view of the position, instead of within the settlement cycle that traditional infrastructure uses.
Who it is for, and who it is not for
The share classes are available to eligible institutional investors in fifteen markets. Those include the Netherlands, Germany, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Spain, Sweden, Estonia and Lithuania, plus the United Kingdom, Singapore and Bermuda.
So nothing changes for retail investors. There is no app where you buy this and no token is coming to an exchange. Anyone who reads that ‘BlackRock is moving to Ethereum’ and thinks there is something there to buy is reading it wrong.
Why it is still worth following
Two reasons, both sober.
The size. 311 billion dollars is not a pilot. Until now, fund tokenisation consisted mainly of trials worth a few hundred million; this is the existing core of a money market business that already existed without blockchain.
The rails. That a bank like J.P. Morgan supplies the infrastructure, and that it happens on the public Ethereum chain instead of on a permissioned variant, says something about where this kind of settlement is heading in the coming years.
What it does not say: anything about the price of ether. A money market fund settled on Ethereum does not buy ether, and the block space demand of twelve share classes is negligible next to existing network usage. Anyone who reads this announcement as an argument about price is attaching a connection to it that is not there.