BlackRock, the leading asset manager, has filed with the SEC to launch a blockchain-based digital share class, called DLT Shares, for its $150 billion Treasury Trust Fund.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Henry Jim revealed that DLT Shares will be exclusively sold through BNY Mellon, which plans to use blockchain technology to track ownership. The offering targets institutional investors, with a minimum investment of $3 million.
Wow! BlackRock filed for Digital share class (DLT Shares) of their $150 billion money market fund (not an ETF)
The Treasury Trust Fund aims to keep a significant portion of its assets in highly liquid investments, such as cash and short-term government securities, to maintain a stable $1 per share value. This system may be a test or early step toward using blockchain for digital currencies or cash transactions in the future.
The fund avoids illiquid securities and will not invest in hard-to-sell assets if that would make up more than 5% of its total value. This helps keep the fund easy to cash out for investors. As of April 29, 2025, BlackRock’s Treasury Trust Fund, part of the BlackRock Liquidity Funds, held around $150.1 billion in assets.
Larry Fink Says Tokenization Could Reshape Finance
BlackRock’s recent move matches CEO Larry Fink’s recent remarks on how tokenization could change investing. In a recent letter to investors, Fink explained that tokenization could speed up transactions, remove delays, and quickly reinvest money back into the economy to help it grow.
Fink also said that the main challenge with tokenized assets is the lack of proper identity checks. Once that is fixed, he thinks that the tokenised funds could become as familiar as ETFs. Other big companies like JP Morgan, State Street, and Franklin Templeton are also exploring blockchain for tokenized funds.
Coinbase SOL Updates:- In a good news for the crypto users and investors, Coinbase has announced the much anticipated upgrade in its Solana infrastructure.
These updates are particularly soothing to the users who had faced significant struggles on Coinbase exchange and its wallet during January.
While announcing the upgrades, the exchange said that it has been working very hard to scale its Solana infrastructure since then.
Notably, Solana’s memecoin trading-driven surge has pushed the exchange’s Solana stack to ten times higher than its actual throughout.
What are the new Upgrades in Coinbase Solana Infra?
In early 2025, Coinbase users took to social media to vent our their frustration in the exchange’s long transactions time for Solana.
A user had reportedly said that two transactions from a Solana wallet to coinbase took him more 10 hrs – to get completed.
Now in order to solve this, Coinbase as part of its new updates has shifted to asynchronous transaction handling.
This means that its systems can now process transactions blocks in parallel. Previously, transaction blocks were processed sequentially, which created bottlenecks under heavy load.
According to the largest US exchange’s X post, this will improve its block processing throughput by 5 times.
This change alone is expected to slash wait times for transaction confirmations. This means that high‑volume periods will no longer compromise user experience or liquidity flows.
Coinbase Shifts to Bare‑Metal Machines and Enhance liquidity
In addition to software tweaks, Coinbase has migrated critical components of its Solana stack onto dedicated bare‑metal servers rather than virtualized cloud instances.
Virtual machines (VMs) run on top of something called a hypervisor, which is like a middleman between the software and the actual computer. This middleman uses up some of the computer’s power (CPU and memory), which can slow things down.
But the newly adopted bare-metal servers skip that middleman. According to IBM, they let the software run directly on the hardware, so Coinbase’s systems can use 100% of the server’s power.
In simple terms, this means faster processing, quicker responses from the system, and smoother handling of Solana transactions.
According to the exchange, this shift can deliver roughly a four‑fold improvement in remote procedure call (RPC) speed – allowing faster queries and state reads on the Solana ledger.
Further, Coinbase has also deployed back‑end optimizations to ensure better distribution of SOL liquidity across its order books and custody wallets. Its enhanced monitoring tools would now track on‑chain and off‑chain liquidity metrics.
These “operational changes” would give Coinbase’s operations team finer‑grained oversight to prevent order execution delays and maintain deep, frictionless liquidity for Solana assets.
Further, these updates to the exchange’s Solana ecosystem come as Canada approves and launches first Spot Solana ETFs this week.
Upgrade for Transaction Failures
To bolster resilience, the exchange has also introduced advanced failover augmentations. This will automatically reroute traffic in the event of node failures or network congestion.
The upgrade implements multi‑region redundancy and health‑check protocols that detect performance degradation in real time.
If a node underperforms or becomes unresponsive, traffic would immediately shifts to healthy nodes without manual intervention. This will help in guarding users against partial outages or cascading failures that have previously led to stalled transactions.
Bullish Market Reaction
News of the Coinbase Solana infrastructure improvements has already created ripple effects across the Solana markets.
As of writing, SOL’s price has climbed by 6% to its highest level in April – trading around $136 – today. This has ended up outperforming many top cryptocurrencies – XRP, BTC, ETH – as investors viewed the upgrades as a bullish signal for on‑chain activity and exchange confidence.
Notably, SOL Price is also driven by the Solana ETF approval in Canada.
SOL Price Today | Source: Coingecko
The upgrades become all the more important as Solana’s on‑chain trading continues to grow.
Particularly driven by the memecoin trading volume, its current state stands at over $15 billion in DEX transactions during the past seven days alone. Surprisingly, this has surpassed every other chain in this time frame.
Ethereum price has also seen a correction, but still demonstrates strong performance on longer timeframes. Several analysts are still optimistic about ETH’s future and indicate that the recent drop could provide a buying opportunity prior to a possible rise to $4,000. Analysts are bullish on the Ethereum price Despite the recent market correction, leading crypto analysts like Michaël van de Poppe have optimistic expectations for the Ethereum price. Price targets also suggest a potential rally to $4,000. The ETH price performance is still positive, with 57.2% returns in the past month. $ETH goes towards the ‘buy the dip’ range. Sub $2,400 is the area where you’d want to accumulate before the next run towards $4,000. pic.twitter.com/y56cKttUHY — Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) May 19, 2025 Analyst Michaël van de Poppe noted what he calls a “buy the dip” region. He indicated that prices below $2,400 provide an accumulation opportunity “before… Read More at Coingape.com
Since its launch in late March, World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin USD1 has achieved an impressive market capitalization, reflecting strong investor interest. If the creators want to maximize USD1’s reach by accessing markets abroad, particularly in Europe, they must confront MiCA’s extensive compliance list.
In a BeInCrypto interview, experts from Foresight Ventures, Kaiko, and Brickken stressed the importance of stablecoin issuers having substantial European bank reserves, operational volume caps protecting the euro, and transparent USD1 information to ensure transparency and avoid conflicts of interest.
USD1’s Search for Dollar Dominance
World Liberty Financial (WLF), a decentralized finance (DeFi) project heavily associated with the Trump family, officially launched USD1 a month ago. Through this stablecoin, WLF aims to promote dollar dominance worldwide.
So far, this initiative has been working well for WLF. According to CoinGecko, USD1 has now surpassed a market capitalization of $128 million and reached a 24-hour trading volume of nearly $41.6 million. The project has already released 100% of its total supply of 127,971,165 tokens.
USD1’s market capitalization over the past 24 hours. Source: CoinGecko.
For WLF to seriously establish dollar dominance across the globe, it will have to move fast and efficiently. This urgency stems from the need to surpass its main competitors, USDT and USDC. These rivals currently hold a massive market share advantage.
Additionally, there’s a need to maintain a competitive advantage against established currencies like the euro.
USD1 needs to access foreign markets and stand out from established competitors to achieve this. Should Europe become a primary target, USD1 must prepare to tackle numerous challenges head-on.
The EU’s Stringent Compliance Demands
The European Union (EU) became the first jurisdiction in the world to establish a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets across its 27 member states. This regulation, known as Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA), has been in effect for nearly four months. Through this legislation, the EU has confirmed how seriously it takes compliance with a defined regulatory regime.
The regulation is detailed and clear, leaving no room for interpretation. If USD1 wants to operate in this crypto market of 31 million users, it must ensure it meets every demand.
US Senators Flag Risks of Presidential Involvement in USD1
In the letter, the group asked both agencies to clarify how they plan to uphold regulatory integrity following the issuance of USD1.
The Senators cautioned that letting a president personally benefit from a digital currency overseen by federal agencies he has sway over is a big risk to the financial system. They argued that an unprecedented situation like this one could hurt people’s trust in how regulations are made.
“The launch of a stablecoin directly tied to a sitting President who stands to benefit financially from the stablecoin’s success presents unprecedented risks to our financial system,” they argued.
The letter further detailed situations where Trump could directly or indirectly affect decisions regarding USD1.
As things stand, USD1 isn’t well-prepared to follow MiCA’s strict reporting and transparency rules.
How Do Concerns Over USD1 Impact MiCA Acquisition?
According to Ianeva-Aubert, if USD1 doesn’t clear up doubts over potential conflicts of interest, this would affect its ability to apply for an operating license in the European Union.
“MiCA requires strong governance, including independent directors and clear separation between owners and managers. Issuers must have clear rules to handle conflicts of interest. If USD1 has any conflicts, this could make it harder to comply,” she said.
Ianeva-Aubert also highlighted that WLF still hasn’t released enough public information on USD1 to assess the degree of its compliance effectively. In particular, the stablecoin issuer has not disclosed the measures it would take to safeguard against market manipulation.
As of now, USD1 would likely fail MiCA’s transparency tests. However, industry experts pointed out other parts of the framework that might be even larger obstacles for USD1 to operate across the European Union.
Impact of the EU’s Reserve Mandate on USD1
When asked about the biggest regulatory hurdles USD1 would face in securing a MiCA license, experts’ responses were unanimous. The stablecoin would need to store a large portion of its reserves in a European bank.
This mandate has proven difficult for established stablecoin issuers seeking operations across the region.
This regulation aims to ensure seamless accessibility for European crypto users and traders. For Forest Bai, Co-founder of Foresight Ventures, USD1 could capitalize on this opportunity during the early stages of its development. By doing so, it could avoid some of the obstacles its competitors had to endure.
Yet, even as USD1 scales and its demand grows, other mandatory requirements could restrict its scope of success.
MiCA’s Transaction Volume Caps to Preserve Euro Dominance
As part of the MiCA regulation, the European Union has taken specific measures to safeguard the euro’s dominance. If a digital currency not denominated in euros were to become extensively adopted for daily payments within Europe, it could present a potential risk to the European Union’s financial sovereignty and the stability of the euro.
To contain this possibility, MiCA places volume caps on transactions used as a means of exchange within the EU.
In other words, MiCA establishes predefined limits on the transactional volume of such currencies. The EU initiates regulatory measures when these limits are exceeded due to widespread payment usage.
Specifically, USD1 issuers must suspend any further digital currency issuance and provide a remediation plan to the relevant regulator, outlining steps to ensure their usage does not negatively impact the euro.
If USD1 wants to work in places where it can experience uninhibited growth, the European market might not be the best fit for this stablecoin. Other parts of MiCA also suggest this could be the case.
MiCA Limitations to Stablecoins as Investment Vehicles
EU regulators have been clear that stablecoins, or e-money tokens (EMTs), as the regulation refers to them, are payment instruments that should not be confused with investment vehicles. The MiCA framework has a few rules in place to prevent this.
Given the circumstances, experts like Bai think WLF might want to focus on countries with better market conditions for stablecoin issuers.
Should WLF Consider the EU Market for USD1 Operations?
While the European Union has an undeniable crypto market presence, other jurisdictions have an even larger footprint.
”The EU’s crypto market remains comparatively small, with just 31 million users versus Asia’s 263 million and North America’s 38 million users, according to a report from Euronews. This limited market size may not justify MiCA compliance costs for projects, like WLFI,” Bai told BeInCrypto, adding that “Projects ultimately determine their own growth strategy. Given that, currently, the EU represents a secondary market for USD1, the project’s strategic priorities may naturally shift toward regions with less stringent stablecoin regulations to drive its adoption.”
These circumstances alone may prompt USD1 to reconsider its options.
In fact, USD1 could start by gaining a competitive edge right at home.
USD1’s Political Backing at Home
With a crypto-friendly president in office –whose very crypto project officially announced the launch of USD1– the stablecoin has sufficient backing to make its mark.
Looking past the immediate future, Bai underlined that if the US doesn’t keep developing supportive crypto regulations, USD1’s growth in the country could be held back following a government shift.
Given this reality, USD1’s failure to comply with the EU’s regulations, should it ever even consider applying for a MiCA license in the first place, could have negative consequences for the project’s long-term viability.
Regardless of the markets WLF evaluates in its efforts to increase the reach of USD1, compliance with general stipulations concerning transparency, legal architecture, and real-time transaction oversight could be conducive to its eventual success.
(@Shiba_King1991) 
