CORRECTION (March 21, 7:07 p.m. ET): A previous version of this story incorrectly identified the receiving wallet as belonging to BlackRock; however, it is only associated with the fund and is not controlled by it. The story also inaccurately stated that BlackRock put a little over $100 million in its new fund, when it was a wallet associated with BlackRock’s fund that received $100 million in USDC. We regret the errors.
A wallet on Ethereum associated with a new institutional fund from asset manager BlackRock received a little over $100 million in USDC on Wednesday, blockchain data from Etherscan shows. That wallet now contains at least 48 different memecoins and 28 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) thanks to anonymous crypto users that took the opportunity to send the address a flurry of tokens in true degen fashion.
Blockchain sleuths tagged the wallet as being associated with BlackRock after linking it to the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund — a new tokenized fund on the Ethereum network that trades under the ticker BUIDL.
The fund, launched in partnership with San Francisco-based Securitize Markets, will offer institutional investors the opportunity to earn US dollar yields through tokenized onchain investment products. Anchorage Digital Bank NA, BitGo, Coinbase, and Fireblocks are among the fund’s initial ecosystem participants, who will also act as infrastructure providers when it comes to things like custody and redemptions.
Market participants were undoubtedly excited about the new fund, but in addition to the more serious takes about how a tokenized fund on Ethereum from the world’s largest asset manager legitimizes the digital asset industry as a whole, some users chose to commemorate the occasion with memecoins.
Currently, the wallet address holds 500,000 unshETHing_Token (USH) and 10,000 Realio Network (RIO) tokens, sent by anonymous users shortly after the wallet was discovered. Data from CoinGecko shows that RIO, which is a real-world asset tokenization coin, is up 47% since the transfers were made.
Users also flooded the wallet with tokens like Pepe (PEPE), Cramer Coin (CRAMER) and VoldemortTrumpRobotnik-10Neko (ETHEREUM). Some users also sent NFTs like Chungos, Tubby Cats, and KaijuKingz to the wallet address.
While users often send memecoins to well-known names in the crypto space as a joke, they are sometimes lost for words when the recipients re-gift these coins to other places. In 2021, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin burned 90% of the unsolicited dog-themed memecoins in his wallet and donated the rest to charities.
