Fireblocks acquires tokenisation firm BlockFold to serve big banks and institutions
Fireblocks has acquired BlockFold – a smart contract development and consulting firm specialising in advanced tokenisation projects for financial institutions.
It is hoped the acquisition will enrich Fireblocks’ tokenisation capabilities by providing clients with a complete service layer that includes advisory, token customization, orchestration, and distribution through the Fireblocks Network.
The company will continue collaborating with its tokenisation partners Bitbond, Securitize, Tokeny, and others, to create an open marketplace for customers that may require support for specific use cases.
“BlockFold’s expertise fills an important gap in the market, tailoring bespoke solutions for some of our most sophisticated customers and prospects in the banking and financial institutions space,” said Michael Shaulov, Fireblocks co-founder and CEO .
“We already speak a common language in understanding these customers’ requirements at an architectural level. Bringing BlockFold’s expertise in-house means that we can better serve tier-1 financial institutions to quickly and seamlessly bring tokenization projects into production and new assets onto the blockchain. In addition, we can continue to innovate and expand our offerings and tailor our approaches as the market continues to mature and evolve.”
Since its first bank-issued stablecoin for ANZ in March 2022, Fireblocks has delivered more than 10 stablecoin projects and is in active conversations with more than 25 banks globally who are exploring the creation of bank-issued stablecoins or tokenised deposits.
In May 2023, Fireblocks enabled the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the Israeli Ministry of Finance to tokenise and settle a government bond following a live auction with five domestic and seven global banks. As the sole issuers of Israeli government bonds, both parties now have a credible path to tokenise Israel’s government debt market, which is worth $15 billion annually.
“Fireblocks and BlockFold were instrumental in helping us take our digital treasury bond initiative, Project Eden, from ideation to Proof-of-Concept,” explained Orly Grinfeld, EVP, Head of Clearing at Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
“With BlockFold deploying the smart contracts and enabling the transferring, minting, burning and atomic swap of tokens, and Fireblocks acting as the interoperability layer between the technology stack, we were able to create the first large-scale collaboration between the private and public sectors to use blockchain, smart contracts and tokenization to revolutionise the settlement and issuance process in traditional capital markets.”
Francois Schonken, newly appointed Senior Director, Tokenization Business Lead at Fireblocks added: “While numerous standards for tokenised assets exist, large financial institutions often require a higher degree of customization of smart contracts as well as orchestration and integration into legacy systems.
“We have always appreciated the way in which the Fireblocks team understands this at a fundamental level when we have worked with them in the past. We cannot be more thrilled to be part of this team and to unlock even more value out of tokenisation and decentralised finance to support our customers.”