Latest news with #MichaelSonnenshein
Forbes
18-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Major Crypto Exchanges To Accept BlackRock's $2.9 Billion Tokenized Money Market Fund As Collateral
Riobert Mitchnick (left), head of digital assets at BlackRock, and Michael Sonnenshein, COO at Securitize For years, crypto traders posting collateral on exchanges have faced a tough tradeoff: use stablecoins like USDC or tether, which are, well, stable but pay no yield, or roll the dice with volatile assets like bitcoin and ether, risking a double hit when markets turn south: losses on your trade and on the collateral backing it. Collateral plays a critical role in crypto. It's the security deposit behind leveraged bets, ensuring traders can cover their losses when things don't go their way. But until now, the options were limited: stable but idle, or productive but unpredictable. Now, there's a third way. BlackRock's BUIDL, the asset manager's first money market fund issued on a public blockchain in partnership with tokenization specialist Securitize, will become accepted as collateral on and Deribit, two of the industry's largest exchanges. That means institutional and experienced traders of these platforms can now post a yield-bearing, blockchain-native version of U.S. Treasurys to back trades. Because BUIDL is both less volatile and income-generating (it currently pays around 4.5% annually), exchanges can offer lower minimum collateral requirements, freeing up more capital for traders to deploy elsewhere. 'This is a major turning point,' says Michael Sonnenshein, COO at Securitize. 'We're really starting to see not just the emergence but a real solidification of tokenized securities becoming a challenger to stablecoins as the common denominator across the crypto ecosystem. They're now becoming what we would consider programmable productive capital, as opposed to just a passive investment instrument used for yield or a safe place to park capital.' Since its launch in March 2024, BUIDL has grown to $2.9 billion in assets. Its largest holders include Ondo Finance, which tokenizes real-world assets, and Ethena Labs, the creator of the USDe stablecoin. which says it serves over 140 million users globally, will make BUIDL available as collateral to institutional clients in select jurisdictions across its full suite of services, including spot, margin, derivatives, and OTC trading, according to President and COO Eric Anziani. Deribit, the largest crypto options exchange with over $1.1 trillion in volume in 2024, will allow institutional clients to post BUIDL as collateral for futures and options trading, and make it available on its spot exchange. Historically, most of collateral on Deribit has been denominated in bitcoin. 'In the end, it boils down to choice and efficiency,' says the exchange's CEO Luuk Strijers. '80-85% of our business is institutional, and we are getting more of these traditional firms that don't necessarily hold a lot of crypto but hold a lot of dollars and don't want to miss out on yield.' The integration could also accelerate adoption across the industry. Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the U.S., is in the process of acquiring Deribit for $2.9 billion. So BUIDL could soon be available across Coinbase's broader ecosystem, bringing tokenized Treasurys even deeper into the crypto trading stack.
CNBC
13-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Coinbase shares soar as the crypto exchange gears up to join S&P 500: CNBC Crypto World
On today's episode of CNBC Crypto World, Coinbase shares surge after it was announced that the crypto exchange is joining the S&P 500. Plus, Robinhood says it will buy the Canadian crypto firm WonderFi as the retail trading platform looks to expand its global footprint. And, Michael Sonnenshein of Securitize discusses a new partnership with VanEck to launch the asset manager's first tokenized fund.
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Securitize's Sonnenshein on Crypto Market, Tokenization
Securitize Inc. COO Michael Sonnenshein discusses the state of the crypto market under the Trump administration and the tokenized Treasury market on "Bloomberg Crypto." Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Exclusive: BlackRock expands blockchain-based money market to Solana, in tie-up with startup Securitize
Solana, the fast-growing Ethereum challenger. The move comes a year after the finance giant launched the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Fund. BUIDL takes traditional money market funds—which serve as short-term places to park cash and earn yield—and combines it with the ledger and payment properties of blockchain. Crypto-savvy investors can park their BUIDL funds now on seven blockchains, including Solana. Initially launched on Ethereum, BlackRock's tokenized money market fund has attracted a steady inflow of capital. This comes as part of a broader push in the financial sector to embrace tokenization, a term that describes taking financial assets that exist "off chain," like paper bonds or stocks, and recording their existence "on chain," or on a blockchain. BUIDL has accrued $1.7 billion—in cash and Treasury bills—as of Tuesday and will cross $2 billion in early April, said a spokesperson for Securitize. "We're making them unboring," Michael Sonnenshein, COO at Securitize, told Fortune, in reference to money market funds. "We are advancing and leapfrogging some of the quote-unquote deficiencies that money markets may have in their traditional formats." In 'traditional formats,' traders can only buy and sell money market funds during business hours. But crypto markets are live 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and investors need to quickly exit or enter positions. Crypto markets are also volatile, and traders often need a safe haven to protect themselves from sudden up or downswings. Historically, traders have used stablecoins, which are designed not to fluctuate, as a cash equivalent. The tokens also don't require holders to go from cryptocurrency to fiat. However, the most popular stablecoins, USDT and USDC, don't provide holders yield. That's why firms like BlackRock have launched interest-bearing products on blockchains. Franklin Templeton, another titan of traditional finance, has released its own blockchain-based money-market fund. And Figure Markets, launched by SoFi founder Mike Cagney, recently announced that it had received approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission for an interest-bearing stablecoin. 'Our vision for why on-chain finance adds more value is because you can do more things with those assets on chain than you could if [they're] sitting in your brokerage account,' Lily Liu, president of the Solana Foundation, told Fortune. BlackRock's expansion of BUIDL comes as the asset manager increasingly dips its toes into the crypto markets. In January 2024, it launched a spot-Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, which has since attracted almost $40 billion, according to crypto analytics firm SoSoValue. 'ETFs are step one in the technological revolution in the financial markets,' Larry Fink, BlackRock's CEO, told CNBC in January. 'Step two is going to be the tokenization of every financial asset.' This story was originally featured on
Bloomberg
25-03-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Securitize's Sonnenshein on Crypto Market, Tokenization
Securitize Inc. COO Michael Sonnenshein discusses the state of the crypto market under the Trump administration and the tokenized Treasury market on "Bloomberg Crypto." (Source: Bloomberg)
