HedgeCo.Net — Securitize and Ethena Labs have launched a 24/7 liquidity facility for BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), allowing eligible investors to exchange BUIDL for supported stablecoins, including USDC, and back again outside traditional market hours. The companies announced on November 12 that the facility is live.
The facility starts with $50 million in initial liquidity, split evenly between $25 million of USDC and $25 million of BUIDL. As liquidity is used, up to another $50 million can be made available within about an hour, bringing maximum capacity to $100 million, subject to the facility’s terms and availability. The companies noted that the $100 million figure describes maximum capacity, not the amount continuously funded.
The launch delivers on a framework announced in June as part of an expanded collaboration between Ethena and BlackRock. It also builds on the existing link between the firms through USDtb, Ethena’s digital dollar product, which is backed primarily by BUIDL. Securitize, which listed on the NYSE, reported about $5 billion in tokenized assets as of September.
“Tokenization is about more than putting assets onchain. It’s about making those assets more useful,” said Carlos Domingo, co-founder and CEO of Securitize. Ethena founder Guy Young said institutional liquidity needs to keep pace with markets that operate around the clock.
For crypto funds and treasury managers, the practical value is weekend and overnight access to a Treasury-backed instrument without waiting for banks to reopen. The facility’s size is modest relative to BUIDL and the wider stablecoin market, but it is a template for how tokenized money market funds could serve as round-the-clock collateral and cash management tools, a key step for institutional adoption of onchain dollar products.