BlackRock Just Chose Uniswap. The Market Didn't Care. Here's Why.

On Wednesday, BlackRock announced that its $2.4 billion tokenized Treasury fund, BUIDL, would be tradable on UniswapX through a partnership with Securitize.

The firm also disclosed it had purchased UNI tokens as a strategic investment. Robert Mitchnick, BlackRock's head of digital assets, called it "a notable step in the convergence of tokenized assets with decentralized finance."

This is, by any reasonable measure, a significant development. The biggest player in global finance is routing a tokenized government bond through DeFi infrastructure. Whitelisted investors with $5 million minimums can now swap BUIDL for USDC around the clock, settled on Ethereum. 

It's worth noting which chain BlackRock chose for this: Ethereum. A decade of uptime and credible neutrality is quietly paying off. When the world's largest asset manager needs a settlement layer for tokenized Treasuries, it picks the network that has never gone down.

UNI surged from $3.26 to $4.57 in about 15 minutes. By the next morning, it was back to $3.37.

The market bought the thesis, did the math, and sold.

Nic Carter put words to this dynamic recently on the Bits + Bips podcast. Paraphrasing: the VC-backed, flashy token era is over. What's left is "the boring stuff," the cash-flowing businesses, crypto as invisible infrastructure powering finance. 

Wednesday's UNI price action was a perfect illustration. The protocol got a landmark endorsement. The token couldn't hold a rally for 12 hours.

In the rest of the article, we’ll cover:

• Why the UNI rally died within hours

• The key metric institutions actually price

• Three scenarios for UNI over 12 months

• The catalysts that could re-rate UNI’s economics

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