In August 2025, Wall Street was undergoing a quiet yet profound transformation. When the price of Ethereum broke through $4,800 on August 23rd, hitting a four-year high and rising over 200% from its low in April, the market gradually realized that this surge wasn't just driven by a speculative frenzy in cryptocurrencies; it also reflected the strategic bets of traditional financial giants on blockchain technology. Wall Street institutions like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton were migrating billions of dollars in real-world assets (RWA) onto the Ethereum network, propelling the world's second-largest cryptocurrency into the core infrastructure connecting traditional finance and the digital economy.
01 Institutional Heavy Deployment
Institutional-level RWA deployment on the Ethereum network has blossomed in multiple locations.
The BUIDL fund, launched in March 2024 by BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company, is expected to exceed US$1 billion in size in 2025 and has been granted an investment company license by the Spanish National Securities Market Commission (CNMV). Its core strategy is to achieve compliant tokenization of U.S. short-term Treasury bonds through Ethereum.
The "Virtual Asset Tokenization Implementation Guidelines 2.0" launched simultaneously by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority clarifies the compliance framework for real estate tokenization, forming a cross-regional regulatory synergy effect.