ICI's latest weekly "Money Market Fund Assets" report shows money funds inching lower by $2.2 billion to $6.506 trillion, after jumping $40.4 billion last week to a record $6.508 trillion. Assets have risen in 10 of the last 13, and 21 of the last 28 weeks, increasing by $202.4 billion (or 3.2%) since the Fed cut on 9/18 and increasing by $528.5 billion (or 8.8%) since April 24. MMF assets are up by $620 billion, or 13.1%, year-to-date in 2024 (through 10/30/24), with Institutional MMFs up $282 billion, or 9.2% and Retail MMFs up $337 billion, or 20.1%. Over the past 52 weeks, money funds have risen by $811 billion, or 14.2%, with Retail MMFs up by $413 billion (18.6%) and Inst MMFs rising by $398 billion (11.4%).
ICI's weekly release says, "Total money market fund assets decreased by $2.20 billion to $6.51 trillion for the week ended Wednesday, October 30, the Investment Company Institute reported.... Among taxable money market funds, government funds decreased by $2.94 billion and prime funds decreased by $345 million. Tax-exempt money market funds increased by $1.08 billion. " ICI's stats show Institutional MMFs decreasing $6.7 billion and Retail MMFs rising $4.5 billion in the latest week. Total Government MMF assets, including Treasury funds, were $5.314 trillion (81.7% of all money funds), while Total Prime MMFs were $1.058 trillion (16.3%). Tax Exempt MMFs totaled $133.6 billion (2.0%).
ICI explains, "Assets of retail money market funds increased by $4.47 billion to $2.63 trillion. Among retail funds, government money market fund assets increased by $2.61 billion to $1.67 trillion, prime money market fund assets increased by $779 million to $835.48 billion, and tax-exempt fund assets increased by $1.08 billion to $122.10 billion." Retail assets account for over a third of total assets, or 40.4%, and Government Retail assets make up 63.6% of all Retail MMFs.
They add, "Assets of institutional money market funds decreased by $6.68 billion to $3.88 trillion. Among institutional funds, government money market fund assets decreased by $5.55 billion to $3.64 trillion, prime money market fund assets decreased by $1.12 billion to $222.87 billion, and tax-exempt fund assets were unchanged at $11.50 billion." Institutional assets accounted for 59.6% of all MMF assets, with Government Institutional assets making up 94.0% of all institutional MMF totals.
According to Crane Data's separate Money Fund Intelligence Daily series, money fund assets have risen by $87.4 billion in October through 10/30 to $6.852 trillion. Assets rose by $149.8 billion in September, $109.7 billion in August, $16.6 billion in July, $15.7 billion in June and $91.4 billion in May. They declined by $15.8 billion in April and $68.8 billion in March. They rose $72.1 billion in February, $93.9 billion in January, $32.7 billion in December and $226.4 billion in November. MMF totals fell by $31.9 billion last October. Note that ICI's asset totals don't include a number of funds tracked by the SEC and Crane Data, so they're about $340 billion lower than Crane's asset series.
In other news, a press release titled, "MANTRA and Libre Open Onchain Access to BlackRock Money Market Fund," tells us, "MANTRA, a layer 1 blockchain purpose-built for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) has partnered with Libre Capital, a UAE-headquartered financial instruments tokenization and issuance platform, to provide investors with onchain access to a diverse range of attractive investment funds. This partnership will provide those MANTRA users that are institutional or accredited investors with investment opportunities across a number of notable onchain funds, including leading hedge funds, private credit funds and the BlackRock ICS Money Market fund. "
It explains, "By leveraging Libre's capabilities and MANTRA's robust ecosystem, the partnership will facilitate the issuance of a tokenized BlackRock ICS Money Market Fund, and expand investment horizons for institutional and accredited investors seeking to diversify their portfolios within the digital asset landscape. The initiative underscores MANTRA's commitment to leading the development of a comprehensive and diverse digital asset infrastructure, and strengthens MANTRA's position in the growing digital asset spectrum within the financial services industry."
The release says, "Libre operates backbone infrastructure that allows investors to access tokenized versions of real world assets such as money market funds, private credit and hedge funds and other alternative asset products on public blockchains. Libre does this through the on-chain Libre Gateway DeFi dApps (decentralized applications) deployed on each public chain. This enables accredited, professional and institutional investors to directly access top-tier funds on MANTRA Chain in a fully compliant manner."
MANTRA Co-Founder and CEO John Patrick Mullin comments, "We're honored to be partnering with Libre to give users access to this caliber of funds. [W]ith the addition of protocols like the Libre Gateway, MANTRA can better equip users with a best-in-class collection of tools to continue to grow the real-world asset economy."
Dr. Avtar Sehra, CEO and founder of Libre, adds, "The launch of the Libre Gateway on MANTRA Chain is a huge step forward to enable access to wealth and treasury management tools for users on MANTRA, and for Libre to take advantage of MANTRA's RWA-specific infrastructure."
Finally, the release state, "This partnership comes after MANTRA recently announced the launch of its mainnet, simplifying the process of bringing RWAs onchain and marking a significant step in the integration of traditional finance with blockchain technology. For more information about MANTRA and access to the money market funds, visit mantrachain.io."
