BlackRock has revealed plans to buy UNI, the native token of Uniswap, while also moving its US Treasury-backed digital token BUIDL onto the decentralized exchange. The announcement pushed UNI sharply higher, with the token climbing to $4.5 before pulling back to $4.15 at the time of writing, still up 23% over the past 24 hours.
UNI purchase arrives alongside BUIDL deployment
According to the source material, citing Fortune, BlackRock’s UNI purchase came as the firm announced the launch of BUIDL on Uniswap. Working with tokenization company Securitize, BlackRock enabled BUIDL to circulate within a DeFi structure for trading by eligible institutional investors. The size of the UNI purchase was not disclosed, but the move immediately drew attention because it tied a token investment to a live product rollout.
The setup is notable for a simple reason. BlackRock is not only bringing one of its own tokenized products into an on-chain market, it is also taking exposure to the protocol token linked to that market’s governance and ecosystem. In practical terms, that means capital is being directed both to the asset layer and to the trading infrastructure itself.
Large traditional firms are testing DeFi rails
DeFi has long been treated as a crypto-native arena built around smart contracts and automated market making, far removed from the intermediary-heavy structure of traditional finance. That gap has started to narrow as tokenization gains traction. More established financial groups are now testing ways to issue, hold, and distribute assets on-chain.
Within that shift, BlackRock holding a DeFi protocol token carries weight beyond the purchase itself. The source says market analysts see the move as a possible signal to other institutions watching the sector. Even so, access remains restricted for now. BUIDL is available only to qualified institutional investors, and participation is managed through a whitelist system.
Price reaction came first, broader effects remain limited
On the trading side, Uniswap uses smart contracts to match activity and charges a 0.3% fee. The source notes that the short-term impact of BlackRock’s UNI purchase on retail users or overall DeFi trading volumes may still be limited. What changed immediately was market pricing: UNI surged on the news, then gave back part of the move.
Industry participants still view the development as an important test case. If the model works as intended, more traditional assets, including stocks or funds mentioned in the source material, could eventually find distribution through decentralized venues, expanding the range of assets traded through DeFi networks.