After launching its very first tokenized asset fund on Ethereum earlier this weekBlackRock quickly gets introduced to life on the chain – and all the weird and wonderful things that come with it.
Crypto users have sent welcome gifts to a wallet associated with – but apparently not controlled by – the Wall Street giant, including genitalia-themed NFTs and funds linked to a blacklisted service that the US government claims is supports state-sponsored terrorism.
An ether wallet associated with BlackRock’s $100 million USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), which will provide investors with expanded access to on-chain offerings, has received numerous crypto and NFT donations since its launch earlier this week.
Ethereum NFTs donated to the wallet include those from the CryptoDickButts, CryptoTitVag, Goblintown, and Larva Chads collections.
To celebrate @BlackRock’s new $100 million on-chain fund, CryptoDickbutts #2224 aka “BlackRock” has been sent to the entity’s on-chain balance sheet.
As with every other BlackRock asset, the math adds up. pic.twitter.com/QbDTRHRBY2— zhivkoto (@zhivkoto) March 20, 2024
While such graphic gestures may be considered below par for the world’s largest asset manager, in many cases they are no laughing matter. For example, CryptoDickButt NFTs are currently worth 0.59 ETH, or at least $1,979 each, according to Coin gecko.
Other donations sent to the BlackRock-linked wallet include dozens of payments of exactly 0.000069 USDC, sent by a friendly user called big-dick-fink.eth – the name is a subtle allusion to the BlackRock CEO’s reproductive organ Larry Fink.
Sums of several new cryptocurrencies – including the popular meme coin PEPE and lesser-known creations such as BlackCock, Inc., PussyNoodle, Jesus Coin and HarryPotterTrumpHomerSimpson777Inu – also found their way into the wallet.
Then of course there are the thousands of dollars worth of ETH sent to the wallet of TornadoCash, the blacklisted crypto mixer by the Ministry of Finance that it is now illegal to join under federal law. That’s because of the privacy-focused agency’s alleged connections to money laundering, North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, Iran and several organizations around the world that the United States has designated as terrorist organizations.
All in all, they are crypto tokens that are sent unsolicited to the BlackRock affiliated wallet collectively worth tens of thousands of dollars.
While BlackRock should certainly be flattered by such gestures, it is hardly the first major company or entity to receive unsolicited on-chain donations after its wallet address was circulated online.
In 2021, Budweiser received countless numbers of penis, breast, and scatological crypto assets after launching an NFT acquisition initiative. The nation of El Salvadorwhich holds hundreds of millions of dollars worth of BTC, has similarly received many bizarre and delightful Ordinals in its Bitcoin wallet.
Part of the appeal of tricking regular players with absurd on-chain donations is that such transactions – due to the nature of blockchain networks – cannot be rejected by the recipient. The assets are immediately deposited into an entity’s wallet and can only be burned or transferred from there.
It’s still unclear what the Wall Street titan plans to do with its new trove of illegally laundered crypto, meme coins, and explicit on-chain artwork. But if BlackRock’s BUIDL fund represented a sincere desire by the company to emerge from the sanitized world of the crypto ETFs in the belly of true on-chain commerce, it seems the mission is already largely accomplished.
Edited by Andrew Hayward