Uniswap price surges as BlackRock snaps up governance tokens

Decentralised exchange Uniswap’s UNI token becomes the biggest winner after the world’s biggest asset manager, BlackRock, announced on Wednesday that it obtained an undisclosed amount of the protocol’s tokens.

Uniswap’s Ethereum-based token, UNI, was recently priced at $4.25, according to CoinGecko, up more than 20% over the past day.

UNI soared as high as $4.36 just after 9am in New York. The token is still well below its 2021 record of nearly $45.

Other major coins and tokens like Bitcoin and Ethereum were trading lower on Wednesday.

UNI surged on news that Uniswap is working with Securitize, which works to tokenise assets, to make BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) shares available to trade via UniswapX, the protocol’s meta-aggregator similar to CowSwap.

Uniswap is available across several blockchains and holds about $3 billion in investor deposits, according to data from DefiLlama. As the world’s biggest decentralised exchange, Uniswap allows anyone to start trading without revealing personal details such as their name or address.

BlackRock’s BUIDL is a fund by the asset manager that allows investors to trade tokenised US Treasury bills, cash, and repurchase agreements.

“Our mission at Labs is simple: make exchanging value cheaper, faster and more accessible,” Uniswap Labs Founder and CEO Hayden Adams said.

Uniswap did not immediately respond to DL News’ request for comment.

BlackRock did not respond to questions from DL News.

Wall Street titan BlackRock, which manages $14 trillion in assets, has made moves into the crypto world over the past few years, most notably by debuting Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded funds.

Its CEO, Larry Fink, has also spoken about how assets will increasingly be tokenised in the future.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.