BlockBeats news, on February 12, Uniswap Labs announced a partnership with Securitize, allowing BlackRock's BUIDL to now be traded via UniswapX. This marks BlackRock's first direct entry into the DeFi space, enabling qualified institutional investors (subject to whitelisting and a minimum asset threshold of $5 million) to trade using stablecoins. Meanwhile, BlackRock stated it will purchase Uniswap's UNI token, though the exact quantity was not disclosed. In response to this news, the price of UNI briefly surged 00%, rising from approximately $3.3 to $4.5, and has since retreated to $3.5.
The crypto community views it as a milestone in the deep integration of TradFi and DeFi. BlackRock, managing over $14 trillion in assets, choosing Uniswap signifies strong endorsement of DeFi infrastructure, with UNI being named the beneficiary. Uniswap founder Hayden Adams said: "DeFi has had an important day; this partnership leverages Uniswap's market structure to provide on-chain trading for BUIDL investors, with settlement on Ethereum. This is a significant step toward 'almost all value being tradable on-chain'."
Prominent crypto investor William Mougayar said, "Extremely bullish on Ethereum; Uniswap is Ethereum's largest infrastructure, starting with BUIDL and BlackRock-managed fund assets, other tokenized assets will quickly follow." Tony Edward, founder of the Thinking Crypto Podcast, said, "Major adoption of cryptocurrency is happening; BlackRock is embracing DeFi."
However, some community users noted that trading is restricted by whitelist and RFQ mechanisms, with limited liquidity in the early stages, and is not a fully open AMM. BlackRock has previously expanded BUIDL on chains such as Polygon; this move is more akin to DeFi expansion rather than a "first entry."