BlackRock’s Blockchain Dream: One Chain to Rule Them All?

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At the grand assembly of the World Economic Forum, the venerable Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, rose to address the pressing matter of tokenization, a concept as elusive as the Holy Grail of financial innovation. With the fervor of a prophet, he proclaimed that tokenization must transcend its nascent experiments and become the very sinew of market operations, suggesting that a singular blockchain standard might not only trim costs but also “eradicate corruption,” a proposition that ignited a tempest of debate among crypto enthusiasts, particularly those devoted to the Ethereum faith.

Fink, ever the enigmatic figure, refrained from naming the specific network, yet the alchemy of BlackRock’s onchain ventures and its research musings pointed inexorably toward Ethereum, the most probable candidate for this “one common blockchain,” even if he cloaked it in ambiguity. One might say the choice was as inevitable as the sunrise over a well-trodden path.

Delivered in the language of infrastructure rather than the fervor of crypto evangelism, Fink’s discourse leaned heavily on the operational merits of digitized assets and interoperable settlement systems. He spoke of a future where tokenization and decimalization were not mere trends but necessities, a sentiment echoed by the unexpected leadership of Brazil and India in the tokenization of their currencies-a twist as ironic as it was instructive.

He then ventured beyond the realm of payments, casting his gaze toward the capital markets, where he envisioned a world of reduced fees and democratized access, where investments could traverse the realms of tokenized money market funds, equities, and bonds with the ease of a well-practiced dance. Yet, the most provocative of his assertions lay in his call for standardization, a trade-off that implied a willingness to embrace dependency on a single blockchain, a risk he framed as a necessary evil for the sake of security and progress.

At the World Economic Forum, the venerable Larry Fink declared that the movement toward tokenization and digitization is not merely a trend but a necessity. With one common blockchain, we could eradicate corruption, he mused, though one wonders if the very act of centralizing power would not, in itself, breed new forms of corruption.

The “one common blockchain” Larry Fink referenced…

– Ethereum Daily (@ETH_Daily) January 22, 2026

Why Ethereum Is Coming Up

In the abstract, “one common blockchain” could be interpreted as a generic plea for shared infrastructure. Yet, in practice, BlackRock’s public-market crypto endeavors and its tokenization initiatives have gravitated toward Bitcoin and Ethereum, the latter emerging as the most likely vessel for Fink’s vision. The firm’s flagship US spot products, tracking bitcoin and ether, with ETHA launching in 2024, now stand at the center of its Ethereum exposure, a testament to the network’s growing influence.

On the tokenization front, BlackRock’s first tokenized fund, the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), debuted on Ethereum via Securitize in March 2024, marking the network as the original issuance platform for what has become one of the market’s most scrutinized institutional RWAs. While BUIDL has since expanded across multiple networks, the key point remains: Ethereum has been BlackRock’s default starting point, a signal of no small significance in a market where “standards” often follow the path of least resistance.

The stronger indication, however, came not from Davos but from BlackRock’s 2026 thematic outlook, which explicitly posited Ethereum as the infrastructure layer poised to collect the “toll” as tokenization scales. A slide pondered: “Could Ethereum represent the ‘toll road’ to tokenization?” with stablecoin adoption hailed as an early proxy for tokenization “in action,” and “blockchains like Ethereum” positioned to benefit. In the same section, BlackRock cited RWA data “as of 1/5/2026,” noting that “of tokenized assets 65%+ are on Ethereum,” underscoring the network’s lead in today’s tokenized-asset landscape.

At press time, ETH traded at $3,005, a figure as tantalizing as it is transient.

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2026-01-22 14:51