Goldman Sachs brings $100 billion Treasury fund into crypto’s institutional plumbing

Goldman Sachs is putting one of its largest Treasury funds within reach of digital-asset firms without creating a tokenized version of it.

The bank’s roughly $100 billion Treasury fund, FTIXX, is getting a new distribution channel aimed at institutional crypto firms.

The fund will be offered through Lynq, a settlement network used by digital-asset companies, with trades handled by SEC-registered broker-dealer tZERO Securities. It is the first outside fund offered on Lynq, which previously had just one investment product on the network.

It also takes a different route from much of Wall Street’s push into blockchain-based funds. BlackRock built BUIDL as a tokenized fund, while Franklin Templeton offers tokenized shares of its money market fund through BENJI. Goldman’s FTIXX remains the same traditional fund with Lynq giving digital-asset firms another place to access it.

The distinction is that Goldman Sachs doesn’t have to build a new blockchain product to reach crypto firms. Instead, Lynq is trying to bring an established Wall Street fund into the same workflow those firms already use to move money.

“There’s a convergence now that you’re seeing between traditional market participants and digital asset market participants as well,” Lynq CEO Jerald David said in an interview with CoinDesk TV.

For firms using Lynq, FTIXX gives them somewhere to put cash between trades rather than leaving it sitting around. They can earn yield on the money and pull it out when they need it again.

That was a product Lynq’s clients had been asking for, David said. The network works with firms including B2C2, Wintermute, Galaxy (GLXY), FalconX, Crypto.com and Fireblocks, whose businesses can require moving large amounts of money between trades. They wanted another option for putting that cash to work in the meantime.

“We needed to demonstrate that there was client demand,” David said. “Our clients were looking for a treasury asset on the platform that may have had a different yield profile than the other instrument that’s on there right now.”

Getting FTIXX onto the network required some work. Lynq had to modify its technology, restrict access to U.S. clients and integrate with Mosaic, he said. Customers also need a relationship with tZERO Securities and must meet the required onboarding and eligibility checks.

Lynq itself runs on a private, permissioned Avalanche (AVAX) Layer 1 blockchain. Its network has more than 30 institutional digital-asset firms onboarded and more than $89 million in assets, according to the company.