Stablecoin issuer Circle has implemented smart contract support for investors of the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL).
The move provides an off-ramp for BUIDL holders, allowing them to transfer their shares to Circle for 
USDC
+0.011%
, according to a release issued Thursday.
“USDC enables investors to move out of tokenized assets at speed, lowering costs and removing friction,” said Circle Co-Founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire in a statement. “We’re thrilled to provide this functionality to BUIDL investors and deliver the core benefits of blockchain transactions via USDC availability to investors.”
BlackRock previously invested in Circle’s $400 million funding round in April 2022, which led to a partnership between the firms. By November 2022, Circle announced plans to place some of its USDC reserves in a BlackRock-managed money market fund.
BlackRock’s fund
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm, launched BUIDL on Ethereum last month. BUIDL is a tokenized liquid fund that invests in U.S. Treasury bills, among other things, and has its own token of the same name. Within its first week, BUIDL amassed $160 million in inflows and had $288 million as of April 11, according to Etherscan data.
BlackRock tapped Securitize, a token security issuance platform, to “provide qualified investors with the opportunity to earn U.S. dollar yields by subscribing to the Fund through Securitize Markets,” the investment manager wrote in a release.
BlackRock maintains over $10 trillion in assets under management as of January 2024. The firm also issues IBIT, one of the 11 spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved on Jan. 11, 2024.
USDC maintains 28.9% of the total Ethereum stablecoin supply as of April 10, The Block’s Data Dashboard shows. It’s second only to Tether’s USDT, which holds 55.7% of the total supply.
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