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When the crypto community became aware of the situation, Chris O’Connor, the founder of the Cardano Ghost Fund DAO, criticized the Hedera Foundation for what he perceived as misleading the public.
Hedera’s native token, HBAR, experienced a nearly 100% surge in the past 24 hours. The rally was triggered by news that BlackRock, a prominent global asset management company based in the United States, was bringing its ICS US Treasury money market fund (MMF) on-chain to be tokenized on the Hedera network.
In response to this news, HBAR price skyrocketed from $0.087 to $0.175 on April 23, accompanied by a trading volume of $1.48 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. However, the digital asset has since retraced to $1.396 at the time of writing, with a market capitalization of $4.99 billion. The 24-hour trading volume currently stands at $2.69 billion.
A Misconstrued Announcement
The HBAR price drop came after it was clarified that BlackRock was not directly involved in tokenizing the $22.3 billion fund on the Hedera network.
The confusion stemmed from a post by the Hedera Foundation, the nonprofit organization overseeing the network, on Tuesday on X (formerly Twitter). The post announced that blockchain trading and infrastructure companies Archax and Ownera had tokenized BlackRock’s ICS US Treasury Fund on the Hedera network.
The post was accompanied by a video suggesting a partnership between Ownera, Archax, and BlackRock, with HBAR claiming to bring BlackRock “on-chain”.
Today we witness #RWA history as @BlackRock’s ICS US Treasury money market fund (MMF) is tokenized on @Hedera with @ArchaxEx and @OwneraIO, marking a major milestone in asset management by bringing the world’s largest asset manager on-chain 🏦 pic.twitter.com/1Kye8cjAJx
— HBAR Foundation (@HBAR_foundation) April 23, 2024
However, the news was misinterpreted by many and even shared by crypto influencers, leading to the belief that BlackRock was directly responsible for tokenizing the MMF or had partnered with Archax and Ownera.
The video received over 2.1 million views and thousands of reposts, contributing to the surge in HBAR’s price by 96% on Wednesday morning.
Chris O’Connor Slams Hedera for Misleading People
When the crypto community became aware of the situation, Chris O’Connor, the founder of the Cardano Ghost Fund DAO, criticized the Hedera Foundation for what he perceived as misleading the public. He also made it clear that the world’s largest asset manager had no hand in the MMF tokenization, clarifying that what happened was a project based on the Hedera blockchain through the secondary market tokenized shares of a BlackRock fund.
“What did happen was a HBAR project through the secondary market 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,” said O’Connor on X.
He further expressed his frustration with what he described as “misleading marketing” tactics to artificially inflate the value of HBAR.
“These kinds of misleading marketing pump my token pieces are gross. Lol, $HBAR pumped 35% based on a non-event. Guess who gets Rekted’ in the few days as insiders take profit?? Don’t be a sucker,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, despite HBAR’s surge to nearly 100%, the token is far from recovering from its 2021 highs when it traded at $0.57 during the last bull market.
