BlackRock is pushing deeper into crypto market infrastructure by bringing its roughly $2.5 billion tokenized money market fund to OKX, turning idle exchange collateral into a yield-bearing asset while Standard Chartered holds the underlying assets in regulated custody.
The arrangement lets eligible clients use tokens of the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, known by ticker BUIDL, as collateral on OKX. Instead of parking cash or stablecoin balances that earn little to nothing while posted for margin, traders can post a tokenized Treasury-linked instrument that continues generating income.
BUIDL invests in cash, US Treasury bills, and repurchase agreements, and is designed to maintain a stable $1 net asset value.
The new framework gives clients two collateral paths. Certain OKX clients can keep BUIDL off-exchange with Standard Chartered while OKX mirrors the collateral for trading, or they can hold it directly on OKX as yield-bearing margin. The structure puts BUIDL alongside dollar assets such as USD and USDC inside OKX’s margin system.
“This product was designed to minimize risk rather than add the layers of risk,” said Rifad Mahasneh, CEO of OKX Middle East and North Africa and Commonwealth of Independent States. “It becomes more efficient collateral and productive collateral.”
Access is currently limited to investors in the Middle East, but the structure points to a larger institutional race: tokenized money market funds are moving from passive on-chain wrappers into active trading infrastructure. Standard Chartered and OKX launched a similar collateral mirroring program in April 2025 with Franklin Templeton, allowing institutional clients to use cryptocurrencies and tokenized money market funds as off-exchange collateral for trading.
OKX’s role also carries historical baggage from the industry’s last major exchange failure. In March 2023, OKX said it would turn over about $157 million in frozen assets tied to FTX and Alameda Research after a motion in the FTX bankruptcy proceedings. The exchange said it had proactively investigated FTX-related transactions after the November 2022 collapse, immediately froze associated accounts, and safeguarded the assets.
BUIDL has grown into one of the largest tokenized funds in the market since its 2024 launch. Securitize tokenizes the fund, which is available to qualified investors. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has repeatedly argued that every financial asset will eventually be tokenized, a position he reiterated in his latest annual letter to investors.
The broader real-world asset market has become one of Wall Street’s clearest crypto adoption lanes. OKX, which is backed by Intercontinental Exchange, owner of the New York Stock Exchange, is expanding the use of tokenized real-world assets in a market that has grown to around $30 billion, up roughly 400% since the start of last year, according to RWA.xyz.
The risk side is not theoretical. In April, the International Monetary Fund warned that moving trading infrastructure onto blockchain-based systems could accelerate financial crises beyond regulators’ ability to respond.
Information for this briefing was found via Bloomberg and the sources mentioned. The author has no securities or affiliations related to this organization. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.
