Crypto ETF issuer and asset manager BlackRock announced on Wednesday the expansion of its USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) to include five new blockchain ecosystems: Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism, and Polygon. 

Initially launched on the Ethereum network in March 2024, BUIDL rapidly gained traction among investors, becoming the largest tokenized fund globally regarding assets under management (AUM) within just 40 days.

BNY Mellon To Custody BUIDL

The expansion will allow BUIDL to interact with more blockchain-based financial products and infrastructures. BlackRock aims to enhance accessibility for investors, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and digital asset firms, enabling them to leverage BUIDL within the ecosystems of their choice.

Carlos Domingo, CEO and co-founder of Securitize, the firm responsible for tokenizing BUIDL, emphasized the importance of this multi-chain approach in Wednesday’s press release by saying: 

Real-world asset tokenization is scaling, and we’re excited to have these blockchains added to increase the potential of the BUIDL ecosystem. With these new chains we’ll start to see more investors looking to leverage the underlying technology to increase efficiencies on all the things that until now have been hard to do.

With the addition of these blockchains, BlackRock aims to provide increased options and access for investors, allowing developers to build applications that integrate seamlessly with the BUIDL fund.

BNY Mellon, which recently received a Bitcoin and crypto custody license for institutional services, will play a key role in this initiative as the fund administrator and custodian for BUIDL. 

BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Achieves Unprecedented Growth

On the crypto ETF front, BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF, IBIT, has reached a remarkable milestone, surpassing the $40 billion mark in assets under management (AUM) just two weeks after hitting $30 billion. 

This achievement comes in a record 211 days, shattering the previous record of 1,253 days held by the iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (IEMG). 

IBIT is now positioned in the top 1% of all ETFs by assets and at just 10 months old, it has outperformed all 2,800 ETFs launched in the past decade, according to ETF expert Eric Balchunas.

Balchunas further highlighted that Bitcoin ETFs collectively have crossed the $90 billion asset threshold, following a significant $6 billion surge in the past few days. 

This increase comprises $1 billion in new inflows and $5 billion in market appreciation. The growing popularity of Bitcoin ETFs indicates that they are now 72% of the way toward surpassing gold ETFs in total assets.

The rise in Bitcoin ETF assets has coincided with a surge in investor confidence, particularly following Donald Trump’s recent victory over Kamala Harris in the presidential elections. 

This political shift has positively influenced market sentiment, contributing to a broader uptick in cryptocurrency prices. Bitcoin, in particular, has experienced a substantial rally, climbing over 24% to reach a record high of $93,000 in the past week alone.

Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com 

Phantom, a popular cryptocurrency wallet provider, has released an urgent update for its iOS app following reports of app resets that locked users out of their wallets unless they had their recovery phrases.

The issue, which surfaced earlier this week, caused alarm among users who feared the loss of funds due to inaccessible accounts.

“We’re aware that a small number of iOS users are experiencing app resets,” Phantom said in a post on X.

Phantom Releases Updated Version of iOS App

The company asked those impacted to restore their wallets using their recovery phrases.

To prevent further incidents, Phantom swiftly released an updated version of its iOS app.

The team apologized for the disruption, emphasized the importance of securely storing seed phrases, and reassured users of their commitment to avoiding similar issues in the future.

The announcement sparked a wave of responses from users claiming significant losses.

Several reported being automatically logged out, having wallets reset, or seeing their balances wiped after a recent update.

“I lost my 983 SOL; please send it back,” one user wrote.

Another user alleged, “I just lost my wallet holding $600K. This is my life savings—when will I get reimbursed?”

Prominent crypto trader Ace warned their 42,000 followers on X against updating their Phantom wallet without ensuring their recovery phrases were secure.

“The update wipes your wallet on iOS,” they cautioned.

Phantom deleting peoples wallets with the most recent update.

Lots of tokens are going to get burned from folks that forgot to back up keys.

Higher. pic.twitter.com/zduekOfd8O

— ROCKΞT (@RocketGPT) November 13, 2024

Other users highlighted the risk of permanent token loss for those who failed to back up their keys.

As a non-custodial wallet, Phantom cannot recover wallets or funds for users who have lost their seed phrases, as the company does not store this information.

However, Phantom advised affected individuals to contact its support team for additional guidance.

This is not Phantom’s first technical hiccup. In October, the wallet faced downtime, leaving some users with inaccurate account balances.

The company attributed the disruption to an “uptime incident” and resolved the issue within hours.

Phantom Experiences Technical Difficulties During GRASS Airdrop

Last month, Phantom experienced downtime, causing some users to see inaccurate account balances.

The outage happened as users of the Solana-based decentralized app Grass claimed tokens from a recently announced airdrop.

Notably, there have been more instances of Phantom experiencing downtime this year.

On Feb. 3, it experienced “delays with how token balances are being updated.”

On Aug. 15, the wallet startup reported it experienced “a temporary issue that prevented users from properly seeing account balances.” Days later, the Phantom website reported temporary issues.

Despite these wallet difficulties, Solana has displayed robust activity, even surpassing Ethereum in daily network fee generation.

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