BlackRock, SBI and Startale to study linking tokenized money funds to yen stablecoin

What happened

BlackRock Financial Management and BlackRock Japan have signed a memorandum of understanding with SBI Holdings and Startale Group to examine whether tokenized money market funds can be connected to JPYSC, the Japanese yen-pegged stablecoin that SBI and Startale introduced in June. The agreement, reported by CoinGape and Bitcoin.com News, sets up a four-party study rather than a committed product, and it does not attach a timeline to any rollout.

The partners have divided the work into three tracks: technology and infrastructure, business and distribution, and regulation and market development. They said they would also look at bringing in additional partners to advance on-chain finance in Japan and elsewhere, and described the arrangement as open to other financial institutions both inside Japan and abroad.

Yukiko Hashimoto, president of BlackRock Japan, said advances in digital assets, including tokenization, are opening new possibilities for financial markets, and that the firm sees such innovations as a way to move markets forward and deliver new value to investors in Japan. Jonathan Steel, a managing director at BlackRock Financial Management, described the collaboration as reflecting a shared commitment to connect traditional finance with digital asset ecosystems. SBI chairman and president Yoshitaka Kitao said the shift to on-chain finance is becoming an unavoidable global trend, and that Japan must prepare early and build the foundations for the next generation of financial markets if it is to lead rather than fall behind.

Why it matters

Money market funds are where corporations and institutions park idle cash. Putting tokenized fund shares alongside a yen-denominated stablecoin on rails that run around the clock could let a Japanese treasurer move between yen and a yield-bearing fund without waiting for banking hours. For Japan's tokenized real-world asset market, the agreement pairs the world's largest asset manager with a conglomerate that already handles stablecoin issuance and distribution, giving the concept an institutional route rather than a purely experimental one.

What the data shows

BUIDL held roughly $2.17 billion in U.S. Treasurys, repurchase agreements and cash, according to Bitcoin.com News. The agreement involves four entities and three defined work areas, with no deadline attached. The reports place it alongside other institutional moves: JPMorgan recently brought tokenized money funds to Solana for U.S. investors, three Asian central banks agreed to connect stablecoins across borders, Aviva placed $66 million into a tokenized sterling fund on the XRP Ledger, and Ripple secured final approval for a U.S. national trust bank charter.

Background

JPYSC went live in June as Japan's first trust-bank-backed yen stablecoin, with SBI Shinsei Trust Bank managing issuance and crypto exchange SBI VC Trade handling distribution. It uses a trust-type structure that avoids the ¥1 million cap on balances and transfers applied to fund-transfer-type tokens such as JPYC. SBI is also one of Ripple's longest-standing partners in Asia; the same exchange began distributing Ripple's RLUSD after Japan's Financial Services Agency approved it as an electronic payment instrument. SBI and Startale have separately joined the Open Standard alliance to look at interoperability between JPYSC and the OUSD stablecoin. BlackRock's own tokenized Treasury fund, BUIDL, launched in 2024.

What to watch

The main question is whether the memorandum turns into a working product, since it binds no one to launch anything and names no date. Regulatory treatment of a combined tokenized fund and yen stablecoin in Japan will shape how quickly that could happen, and the partners have said other institutions may join. It is also worth noting that the document does not mention Ripple, RLUSD or XRP; the connection to Ripple exists only through SBI, so any read-across to XRP is inference rather than something the agreement states.

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