NEW YORK, June 29 — BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, will integrate crypto protocol Ethena’s yield-generating token USDe into its Aladdin risk management platform and create a $100 million liquidity facility for its tokenized money market fund BUIDL, according to a Monday announcement that sent Ethena’s governance token up about 8%. The deal marks another step by the asset manager into decentralized finance.
The integration will bring Ethena’s “synthetic dollar” token into that system.
The announcement came as part of a broader push by Ethena to deepen ties with traditional finance firms. The record shows recent partnerships with Coinbase, Janus Henderson and Securitize. Monday’s news added BlackRock to that list.
On the timeline, the announcement was published at 2:02 p.m. Eastern, with an update at 2:47 p.m. The price reaction was immediate. ENA traded up roughly 8% over the past 24 hours as investors welcomed another high-profile institutional partnership.
The $100 million liquidity facility for BUIDL is a concrete figure stated in the source. BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund has been a key product in the firm’s digital asset strategy. The integration with Ethena’s USDe token creates a direct link between a major traditional finance risk platform and a DeFi yield product.
The pattern is clear: BlackRock is pushing further into DeFi infrastructure, not just holding digital assets but embedding them into the tools used by the world’s largest financial institutions. The record shows Ethena has been building a string of traditional finance partnerships. BlackRock’s Aladdin platform reaches a vast network of institutional clients.
The integration could open the door for those clients to access DeFi yields through a familiar risk management interface. The market’s reaction — an 8% bump in ENA — suggests investors see this as more than a token partnership.
Whether other major asset managers follow BlackRock’s lead remains to be seen. For now, the document shows a clear move by the world’s largest asset manager to embed a DeFi protocol into the machinery of institutional finance.
