BlackRock enters $30B RWA race with BUIDL collateral initiative – All the details!

BlackRock is expanding the use of its tokenized money market fund, BUIDL, making it available as collateral on OKX. Under the arrangement, Standard Chartered will hold the underlying assets in regulated custody. Eligible OKX clients will be able to use BUIDL as margin collateral.

This addresses a common issue – Capital posted as collateral often earns little or no return. BUIDL is designed to maintain a stable $1 value and invests mainly in U.S Treasuries and repurchase agreements.

Eligible investors would earn yield while using the tokenized fund for trading collateral.

BUIDL will be available as yield-bearing margin collateral

Blackrock’s latest initiative allows BUIDL tokens to be used on OKX in two ways. Some clients can keep the assets with Standard Chartered while making them available collateral on OKX. Others can hold the tokens directly on the exchange and still use them for margin trading.

A statement by OKX read,

For now, the product has only been made available to investors in the Middle East. According to OKX, the structure is meant to make collateral more efficient by allowing it to remain productive instead of sitting unused.

Standard Chartered’s role…

… is to hold the underlying assets for clients who prefer custody outside the exchange. In the “collateral mirroring” model, a regulated custodian holds the assets while the exchange recognizes them for trading.

Source: X

OKX and Standard Chartered had launched a similar setup with Franklin Templeton in April 2025.

Tokenized RWAs continue to grow

BlackRock launched BUIDL in 2024 and tokenized it through Securitize. It has since grown into one of the largest tokenized money market funds available for qualified investors.

Source: rwa.xyz

In fact, the RWA tokenization market has grown to around $30 billion, as per data from RWA.xyz. However, complete trust is yet to come in. In April, the IMF had warned that moving financial infrastructure onto blockchain systems could increase the speed of market stress and make crises harder to contain.