Hedera HBAR token sheds 96% on misinterpreted BlackRock ad
BlackRock's money market fund has been marked by sending the Hedera (HBAR) token on the Hedera blockchain for a 96% rally in the past 24 hours – but the world's largest asset manager only “knows” what's happening on the chain, despite many believing it. Actively participated.
A widely misinterpreted April 23 post by Hbar Foundation X — the organization behind the Hedera network — claimed that blockchain trading and infrastructure firms Archax and Ownera were impersonating the BlackRock ICS US Treasury Fund on the network.
A video shared with the announcement appears to suggest that HBAR, ArcX and BlackRock are in partnership and says HBAR is “bringing the world's largest asset manager into the chain.”
Some cryptocurrency influencers with large X series shared a misinterpretation of the post – which has gathered more than 1.6 million views and 2,700 retweets in the last 15 hours – believing that it means that Blackrock has created a partnership for the $22.3 billion fund to move to the blockchain or Archax and Ownera.
Cardano Ghost Fund DAO founder Chris O'Connor said BlackRock had no involvement with Hedera's development and criticized the HBAR Foundation for the way it made the announcement.
“The HBAR project is a tokenization of shares of the BlackRock fund in the secondary market. Take a picture and post it on my X account like I can buy a Rolex. Rolex did not ‘partner' with me.
Arx founder and CEO Graham Rodford responded to O'Connor, “It was of course Arx's choice. [BlackRocks fund] On the head” and “everyone involved knew,” he added.
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HBAR's 96% rally on the previous day pushed the price to $0.175 – a two-year high, according to CoinGecko.
Despite the price pump, HBAR is down more than 69% from its September 2021 all-time high of $0.57.
The announcement comes as Hedera's Global Governing Council – which oversees Hedera's network – recently approved the allocation of 4.86 billion HBAR (US$408 million at the time) for further network development.
The fund said the HBAR Foundation will strengthen its user base by 2024, following the 2023 performance of 33 billion transactions on the network.
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Update (April 24 7:30 am UTC): This article has been updated to add the X post from Graham Rodford.
