‘Growing investor appetite’ in tokenized fund space: UBS
Also in the tokenized fund space, Franklin Templeton launches on Base and Securitize hits $1 billion in tokenized RWA onchain
This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe .
It’s been a minute since we checked in on the activity over in the tokenized fund space.
Late Friday, UBS — the Swiss bank with $5.7 trillion in assets under management — announced that it was launching uMINT, or the UBS USD Investment Fund built on Ethereum.
Newsletter
Subscribe to Empire Newsletter
“Tokenholders can now access UBS Asset Management’s institutional grade cash management solutions underpinned by high quality money market instruments based on a conservative, risk-managed framework,” the press release said. So it’s unfortunately a bit unclear what financial instruments will make up the fund, whereas other popular funds right now hold US Treasurys.
To give you some perspective: roughly $2.4 billion of total real-world asset value is US Treasury debt, with commodities coming in second at $1.1 billion, per RWA.xyz data. To be clear, the below chart isn’t including Treasurys held by stablecoin issuers such as Circle and Tether.
The co-head of UBS Asset Management APAC, Thomas Kaegi, acknowledged the “growing investor appetite” in the space. Right now, three firms: BlackRock through its Securitize partnership, Franklin Templeton and Ondo dominate the tokenized fund space.
While BlackRock’s BUIDL and Franklin’s funds might be some of the most well-known, it’s actually Ondo that holds the biggest market cap at $655. Securitize is about $100 million shy, coming in at $533 million (which is BUIDL’s market cap). Franklin Templeton has a market cap of roughly $408 million.
A look at the biggest tokenized treasury fundsUBS itself acknowledged that this launch is a sign that the firm is serious about the potential of tokenization, which isn’t a surprise given that it’s a participant in the Project Guardian initiative (the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s tokenization pilot) and has previously partnered to issue tokenized notes in China.
Outside of UBS, it’s worth noting that Securitize surpassed $1 billion in tokenized RWA onchain last week. As I noted above, the RWA platform has seen success through BlackRock’s tokenized fund. And Franklin Templeton launched its OnChain US Government Money Market Fund on Base.
Tokenization may not be one of the sexiest crypto topics, but there certainly is a lot of movement happening in the space.
Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter .
Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter .
Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.
The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.
- Empire Newsletter
- Franklin Templeton
- real world assets
- Tokenization
Disclaimer: The content of this article solely reflects the author's opinion and does not represent the platform in any capacity. This article is not intended to serve as a reference for making investment decisions.
You may also like
Spot Bitcoin ETFs End Positive Dynamics with $438 Million Outflow
Don’t Miss the Next 10,000x Crypto Surge: Why DOGEN Is Outshining Dogecoin and SHIB!
Data: Pantera Bitcoin Fund Up Over 1,000 Times So Far
Whales Turn to BlockDAG’s Utility-Driven Project as Dogwifhat & PEPE Prices Plunge