Bank of New York Mellon (BNY) and Goldman Sachs (GS) are rolling out tokenized money market funds for clients as digital asset adoption is accelerating.
BNY, which is one of the oldest and largest custody banks in the world overseeing $53 trillion of assets, announced on Wednesday to start offering institutional investors token versions of money market fund share classes via its LiquidityDirect platform. Ownership records and transactions are recorded on Goldman Sachs Digital Asset Platform’s blockchain. Institutions that have signed up include BlackRock, Fidelity among others.
BNY acts as the shareholder servicer and custodian for the funds, new role of tokenization manager, responsible for triggering the minting and burning of tokens that mirror fund shares on BNY’s books, according to the offering’s website.
“The step of tokenizing is important, because today that will enable seamless and efficient transactions, without the frictions that happen in traditional markets,” Laide Majiyagbe, BNY’s global head of liquidity, financing and collateral, told CNBC.
Tokenized money market funds, predominantly backed by U.S. government securities, have been at the forefront of tokenization efforts, bringing traditional asset classes onto blockchain rails.
The market for tokenized U.S. Treasuries topped $7 billion this year, more than tripling in a year, RWA.xyz data shows. While rapidly growing, that’s only a fraction of the overall $7 trillion money market fund market.