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BlackRock&#x27;s Jay Jacobs has a name for it. &quot;The Great Convergence.&quot; That&#x27;s how he&#x27;s framing the accelerating merger of decentralized and traditional finance. <a href="https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/2069372385283678414/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cointelegraph reported</a> the statement this week. It&#x27;s the world&#x27;s largest asset manager putting its credibility behind a narrative that&#x27;s <a href="https://www.thecoinzone.com/news/circle-cirbtc-live-ethereum-wrapped-bitcoin-race/" data-wpil-monitor-id="2296">lived in crypto-native circles</a> for years.
Jacobs is BlackRock&#x27;s U.S. Head of Equity ETFs. He&#x27;s not describing a speculative trend. He&#x27;s calling it a <a href="https://www.thecoinzone.com/news/senate-crypto-bill-stalls-coinbase-withdraws/" data-wpil-monitor-id="2289">structural market</a> shift. <a href="https://www.thecoinzone.com/blockchain/best-ethereum-alternatives/" data-wpil-monitor-id="2297">Ethereum&#x27;s the primary infrastructure layer</a>. It&#x27;s positioned to carry institutional volume.
He explained the thesis in terms of investor behavior. DeFi versus TradFi, actively managed <a href="https://www.thecoinzone.com/defi/defi-index-funds/" data-wpil-monitor-id="2292">funds versus index</a> funds, private assets versus publicly listed assets... and what&#x27;s happening is people are looking for more solutions to manage their portfolios,&quot; he said, per Cointelegraph.
The reach was outsized. Cointelegraph&#x27;s post on Jacobs&#x27; remarks pulled 43,194 interactions from its 2.9 million followers, per LunarCrush signal data. That same day, the broader <a href="https://www.thecoinzone.com/defi/what-is-total-value-locked-tvl-in-defi/" data-wpil-monitor-id="2298">DeFi topic registered 69.7 million total</a> interactions. Sentiment: 88% bullish.
This isn&#x27;t rhetorical for BlackRock. The firm already manages the BUIDL <a href="https://www.thecoinzone.com/news/ecb-tokenization-central-bank-money-rules/" data-wpil-monitor-id="2294">tokenized money</a> market fund on Ethereum. It&#x27;s an active on-chain participant. Not a passive observer. That footprint makes Jacobs&#x27; comments different from standard <a href="https://www.thecoinzone.com/news/moonpay-institutional-crypto-investment/" data-wpil-monitor-id="2288">institutional crypto</a> commentary.
Ethereum&#x27;s role is explicit. If you&#x27;re an investor looking to play the growing adoption of <a href="https://www.thecoinzone.com/blockchain/block-depth/" data-wpil-monitor-id="2286">blockchain technology</a>, one of the best and probably fastest-growing use cases right now is tokenization, and Ethereum is a beneficiary of that trend,&quot; Jacobs said, per Decrypt.
The pattern&#x27;s been building across 2025 and 2026. <a href="https://www.thecoinzone.com/nfts/nft-vs-tokenization/" data-wpil-monitor-id="2285">Tokenized real-world assets</a>. On-chain Treasury products. Institutional lending protocols. They&#x27;ve migrated predominantly onto Ethereum&#x27;s settlement layer. The Block reported this year that TradFi institutions are actively acquiring <a href="https://www.thecoinzone.com/news/grayscale-names-5-defi-tokens-fundamental-value/" data-wpil-monitor-id="2290">DeFi tokens</a>. That&#x27;s consistent with what Jacobs is describing.
BlackRock naming this shift carries real weight. The firm&#x27;s iShares <a href="https://www.thecoinzone.com/news/bitcoin-reaches-new-all-time-high-following-us-election/" data-wpil-monitor-id="2295">Bitcoin Trust became the fastest ETF in history to reach</a> $10 billion in AUM. It legitimized Bitcoin as an institutional <a href="https://www.thecoinzone.com/tradfi/cryptocurrency-best-asset-class-ever/" data-wpil-monitor-id="2293">asset class</a>. Allocators who&#x27;d avoided it came in. The same institutional stamp applied to DeFi infrastructure carries comparable force.
<a href="https://www.thecoinzone.com/news/flow-capital-tokenizes-150m-credit-fund/" data-wpil-monitor-id="2291">Capital flows</a> at scale aren&#x27;t guaranteed. But the world&#x27;s largest asset manager has publicly named the trend. The question&#x27;s changing. It&#x27;s no longer whether DeFi and TradFi converge. It&#x27;s how fast. And through which protocols.

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BlackRock's Jay Jacobs Names DeFi-TradFi Merger 'The Great Convergence'

BlackRock's Jay Jacobs calls DeFi-TradFi integration 'The Great Convergence,' naming Ethereum as the key infrastructure layer for institutional blockchain adoption.