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Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.
GM!
Today’s top news:
Crypto majors fall as China trade war rhetoric escalates; BTC at $111k
Gold hits another new ATH as Bitcoin and crypto lags
Larry Fink leans into tokenization, says BlackRock is building tech
Elon praises Bitcoin’s energy foundation in surprising about face
MetaMask partners with Polymarket to bring prediction markets in-wallet
Then he got specific on how tokenization is the future.
The world he envisions includes mutual funds, private credit, money markets, even real-world assets issued as tokens, settling near-instantly, with compliance baked into the token (who can hold it, where it can move, when it can trade).
He said BlackRock is building the tech to drop these products directly into digital wallets, cut settlement frictions, slash transfer/record-keeping costs, and give clients 24/7 portability.
He also stressed that Bitcoin still has a role, but sized responsibly.
🗣️ What They’re Saying
“We’re just at the beginning of the tokenization of all assets, from real estate to equity to bonds, across the board.” — Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, on CNBC
CEO of world’s largest asset manager…
“We're just at the beginning of the tokenization of all assets.”
Yes, includes ETFs.
Larry Fink on his positively evolving attitude towards crypto: “I grow & learn.”
ETFs are the on-ramp today; the bigger story is tokenizing pretty much everything tomorrow.
This is the playbook from the world’s biggest asset manager:
Right now: ETFs keep steady demand flowing into BTC and make advisors comfortable recommending it.
Next up: tokenization makes every kind of asset trading better - faster, cheaper, and wallet-friendly
Net effect: better tech, more access, less friction.
Overall, this means more people gaining access to these investment products, which is a win. And they’ll be able to trade more efficiently via blockchain with lower fees - win win.
But it might not be a complete win.
Ethereum was largely expected to be the home of RWA tokenization.
If that happens on BlackRock’s own rails (and other banks / institutions follow suit), that does hurt one aspect of the Ethereum bull case.
But there also may be a world where bringing that amount of assets and asset types onchain is more net bullish overall than it is bearish to the Ethereum tokenization bull case.
Time will tell…
🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes
A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
Binancepledged another $400M for those impacted by last week’s crash, with $300M for retail traders and $100M in low interest loans for institutional players
