Misinterpreted Announcement About BlackRock and Hedera Led to a Surge in HBAR Token

• Enthusiasm surrounding an HBAR announcement led to a misunderstanding that BlackRock had chosen Hedera to tokenize its fund, causing Hedera's HBAR token to surge.
• Corrections were made to clarify that BlackRock has not formed any partnership with Hedera for tokenization.

The world of crypto is very enthusiastic about everything related to crypto and finance. And this enthusiasm, at times, makes the enthusiasts misinterpret certain things. 

Recently, the HBAR Foundation, supporting the Hedera ecosystem, announced that BlackRock's ICS U.S. Treasury money market fund (MMF) is tokenized on the Hedera blockchain, in collaboration with Archax.

The video in the announcement seemed to imply that Ownera, Archax, and BlackRock were partners in the venture, with HBAR stating it was bringing the world’s largest asset manager on-chain.

However, Hedera enthusiasts on social media quickly assumed that BlackRock had selected Hedera to tokenize its fund, leading to an significant increase in the value of Hedera's native HBAR token.

For instance, content creator & internet entrepreneur, Mason Versluis, posted on X (formerly Twitter) saying BlackRock tokenized one of their MMFs on Hedera.

Crypto media outlet, CoinDesk also reported this matter, and the caption of their news cover image seems to be interpreting the matter precisely. 

“HBAR Foundation said "BlackRock fund is tokenized," Crypto Twitter heard "BlackRock has tokenized fund," the CoinDesk image caption reads.

To make things clear to the public, Chris O’Connor, founder of Cardano Ghost Fund DAO, took it to X saying “Blackrock the actual institution did NOT select HBAR for tokenizing a fund of theirs.” 

O’Connor, in fact, went on to heavily criticize such marketing approaches. He said: 

“These kind of misleading marketing pump my token pieces are gross. Lol, $HBAR pumped 35% based on a non-event. Guess who gets Rekt’d’ in the few days as insiders take profit??”

He further clarified that Blackrock was not involved and has no ties to the protocol. What actually occurred was a project using HBAR on the secondary market that tokenized shares of a Blackrock fund. 

“Much like I can buy a Rolex take a pic and post it on my X account. Doesn’t mean Rolex “partnered” with me,” O’Connor added.

Additionally, according to Cointelegraph, BlackRock also confirmed that it did not select Hedera for tokenizing shares of its $22 billion money market fund, nor has it formed any commercial relationship with the company.

Now, there’s another interesting angle to this whole matter. 

CryptoFire, a Psydoneoumous X user focused on crypto research and investing, said that the announcement by HBAR Foundation is 100% completely accurate. He also accused Cointelegraph of intentional misleading due to some reporters being anti-$hbar.

Edited by Harshajit Sarmah