BlackRock’s Aladdin adds Ethena stablecoin support

BlackRock announced Monday that its Aladdin platform will expand access to Ethena Labs' stablecoin products and support a $100 million liquidity facility provided through Securitize for the USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, known as BUIDL.

Under the agreement, eligible BUIDL clients can exchange BUIDL fund tokens for USDC, Ethena's USDtb and other supported stablecoins, and convert those stablecoins back into BUIDL outside normal market hours.

Ethena will back the $100 million liquidity line, which Securitize will provide and administer in its role as the fund's regulated transfer agent.

Aladdin, BlackRock's portfolio and risk platform used by institutional investors, will connect fund users to Ethena's onchain dollar infrastructure to make token and stablecoin exchanges smoother.

Robert Mitchnick, BlackRock's Global Head of Digital Assets, described the facility as enabling “a level of frictionless interoperability that is core to the unique utility that tokenizing treasury funds makes possible.”

Guy Young, founder of Ethena, described the expansion as an example of infrastructure that allows traditional institutions to interact with onchain financial products through familiar systems and workflows.

Ethena issues USDtb, a stablecoin backed primarily by BUIDL and issued by Anchorage Digital Bank. The firm also operates USDe, a synthetic dollar that uses onchain mechanisms to maintain its peg and can offer different yield behavior than fiat-backed coins.

BUIDL launched in 2024 on Ethereum and is among the largest tokenized U.S. Treasury funds. Industry trackers estimate tokenized Treasurys make up about half of the tokenized real-world asset market, with roughly $15 billion onchain. DeFi Llama lists BUIDL's total value locked at about $3 billion.

Ethena and Securitize enabled round-the-clock atomic transfers between BUIDL and USDtb last year; the new liquidity facility formalizes and extends that interoperability for institutional users on Aladdin.

The partnership aligns with a broader pattern of asset managers and fintech firms building connections between traditional institutional systems and tokenized onchain products to support familiar operational workflows for institutions.