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September 29, 2023 - Fireblocks, a digital asset infrastructure provider, has acquired BlockFold, a smart contract development and consulting firm specializing in tokenization for financial institutions. This acquisition expands Fireblocks' capabilities to provide a complete tokenization service offering including advisory, customization, orchestration, and distribution through its network.
Between 2022 and 2023, Fireblocks saw a 350% increase in demand for tokenization projects among its clients, which include 75% of tier-1 financial institutions exploring tokenization. The BlockFold acquisition enables Fireblocks to support complex tokenization use cases for these clients.
BlockFold's expertise will allow Fireblocks to offer advisory services to determine appropriate tokenization strategies. Fireblocks can now provide customized smart contract development and deployment tailored to each client's needs. The combined offering also includes orchestration of the token lifecycle and distribution of tokens across Fireblocks' global network.
Fireblocks will continue collaborating with partners like Bitbond, Securitize, Securrency, and Tokeny to create an open tokenization marketplace for clients needing support for specific use cases.
Boston Consulting Group projects a $16 trillion tokenized financial assets market by 2030, 10% of all financial assets. Against this backdrop, Fireblocks has seen 350% tokenization project growth between 2022-2023, with 75% of tier-1 institutions exploring tokenization.
Fireblocks CEO Michael Shaulov said, "BlockFold fills an important market gap, tailoring bespoke solutions for sophisticated banking and financial institution customers. Bringing BlockFold's expertise in-house means better serving tier-1 institutions to quickly bring tokenization projects and new assets onto blockchain."
Fireblocks expects $450 billion in tokenized money on blockchain within three years. It recently enabled the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and Israeli Finance Ministry to tokenize and settle a government bond following a live auction. Fireblocks expects $400 billion in tokenized bonds by 2026, reaching $1 trillion by 2028.
Tel Aviv Stock Exchange EVP Orly Grinfeld said: "Fireblocks' BlockFold acquisition can strengthen tokenization capabilities and bridge CeFi and DeFi. This enables institutions like TASE to build robust, scalable infrastructures and well-governed digital asset ecosystems."
Newly appointed Fireblocks Senior Director Francois Schonken said, "Large financial institutions often require customization of smart contracts and legacy system integration. We appreciate Fireblocks' fundamental understanding on this and are thrilled to unlock more value from tokenization and DeFi for customers."
The BlockFold team is integrating into Fireblocks engineering and consulting groups. Co-founder Francois Schonken is Senior Director, Tokenization Business Lead. Co-founder Terence Siganakis is Senior Director, Head of Tokenization Products.
