- UBS is launching a tokenised money market investment fund.
- The Swiss bank becomes the latest traditional institution to embrace tokenisation.
Swiss bank UBS is launching a tokenized investment fund on Ethereum, becoming the latest titan of traditional finance to embrace public blockchains.
UBS follows BlackRock and Franklin Templeton, which have started tokenized funds backed by US Treasuries. Those funds are currently worth $530 million and $410 million, respectively, according to data from RWA.xyz.
UBS’ USD Money Market Investment Fund Token, or uMINT, will be backed by “money market instruments,” according to a news release Friday. It was not immediately clear whether US Treasury assets would be included.
Spokespeople for UBS did not immediately return DL News’ request for comment Friday.
“We have seen growing investor appetite for tokenized financial assets across asset classes,” Thomas Kaegi, the co-head of UBS Asset Management’s Asian arm.
The fund isn’t the Swiss banking giant’s first foray into crypto.
In 2022, it launched a publicly traded, digital bond that settles on a private blockchain. UBS was also a collaborator in a recent pilot program led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore exploring the tokenisation of traditional assets.
Despite the growth of such crypto-based financial products, Wall Street remains wary of much of the crypto economy.
“We go to jail if we don’t know who we’re trading with,” a BlackRock executive said at a conference hosted by Coinbase last year.
But financial powerhouses have embraced tokenisation.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has said that his ultimate goal is “the tokenisation of every financial asset.”
Bernstein analysts called the March launch of BlackRock’s BUIDL “the next evolution of financial markets, similar to the ETF wave of the last two decades,” and “the first major test-case for institutional holders to experience 24/7 instant settlement benefits of the blockchain.”
Earlier this year, JPMorgan Chase and Visa joined a project to test the feasibility of tokenising cash and other assets.
Money funds have proven the most popular experiment to date.
While new to crypto, they’re ubiquitous in the broader financial system.
The first money fund launched in 1971. Since then, the sector has amassed more than $6.4 trillion in assets in the US alone. That’s about three times the valuation of the entire cryptocurrency market, which currently sits at $2.1 trillion.
Aleks Gilbert is a DeFi correspondent based in New York. Have a tip? Contact him at aleks@dlnews.com.
