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Hedera has managed to pump and dump its own token, HBAR, after sending a misguided tweet about tokenizing with BlackRock.
On Tuesday, HBAR foundation announced that the firm was making "RWA history as BlackRock's ICS US Treasury money market is tokenized on Hedera with Archax and Ownera."
BLACKROCK JUST TOKENIZED ONE OF THEIR MONEY MARKET FUNDS ON HEDERA $HBAR! 🔥 https://t.co/0TCxUfGjKa
— MASON VERSLUIS (@MasonVersluis) April 23, 2024
HBAR fans concluded that BlackRock had chosen Hedera to tokenise its fund. Consequently, HBAR rallied over 100% following the announcement from just shy of $0.09 to as high as $0.175.
However, although BlackRock shares were tokenized, it was not BlackRock that did the tokenizing. HBAR Foundation's announcement stated the fund "is tokenized" rather than "BlackRock has tokenized."
The market soon caught wind of this and BlackRock clarified that it had “no commercial relationship” with Hedera and it did not choose Hedera to tokenize its funds.
"As we have in the past, BlackRock will communicate directly with the public on the evolution of our digital asset strategy,” a BlackRock spokesperson said.
Archax CEO Graham Rodford also added that it was his firm's decision to tokenize BlackRock shares on Hedera but noted that BlackRock was "aware" of it.
“If we decide to tokenise, arguably we do not need to approach the investment manager, but we always do as we want long term relationships,” Rodford said.
(17/18) If we decide to tokenise, arguably we do not need to approach the investment manager, but we always do as we want long term relationships. The investment manager’s level of involvement can vary but both abrdn and Blackrock were aware that we were tokenising on Hedera.
— Graham (@Grodfather) April 24, 2024
As a result, HBAR's price has fallen more than 35% to around $0.11, which is still higher than before its announcement.
BlackRock's IBIT, the second largest Bitcoin ETF offering, broke records earlier this last month by reaching $10 billion faster than any US ETF in history. The fund reached the milestone in under two months from 11 January when the SEC greenlit Bitcoin ETFs. Invesco QQQ previously held the record of just over a year.
IBIT also set another record by smashing through its daily trading volume, trading 99.3 million shares over the day, amassing $3.9 billion in volume. Its previous record was $3.7 billion on 5 March. The fund also set a net inflow daily record of $849 million on 12 March. GBTC's lead continues to shrink as IBIT's AUM surpasses $17.5 billion.
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