UBS Launches Tokenized Money Fund
A press release titled, "UBS Asset Management launches its first tokenized investment Fund," tells us, "UBS Asset Management ... announces the launch of 'UBS USD Money Market Investment Fund Token' ('uMINT'), a Money Market investment built on Ethereum distributed ledger technology." Thomas Kaegi, Co-Head of UBS Asset Management APAC, comments, "We have seen growing investor appetite for tokenized financial assets across asset classes. Through leveraging our global capabilities and collaborating with peers and regulators, we can now provide clients with an innovative solution." The release continues, "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. UBS Asset Management's global distributed ledger technology strategy is focused on leveraging public and private blockchains networks for enhanced fund issuance and distribution. As an active industry partner of the Monetary Authority of Singapore's Project Guardian initiative, in October 2023 UBS Asset Management launched a live pilot of a tokenized Variable Capital Company (VCC) fund." The release adds, "More broadly, this fund launch also forms part of the broader expansion of UBS's tokenization services through UBS Tokenize where in June 2023, UBS originated CNH 200 million of fully digital structured notes for a third-party issuer. And in November 2023, UBS completed the world's first cross-border repurchase transaction with a natively-issued digital bond fully executed and settled on a public blockchain." For more, see Bloomberg's "Wall Street's Tokenized Money-Market Funds Seek to Take on Tether" and The Wall Street Journal's "Federal Investigators Probe Cryptocurrency Firm Tether", and see these Crane Data News articles: "The Block: Regulatory Uncertainty Barrier to Tokenized Money Market Funds" (10/27/24), "Calastone on Tokenised Money Funds" (10/23/24), "Hashnote Tokenized Money Mkt Fund" (10/22/24), "State Street Looks at Blockchain MMFs" (10/11/24), "Coindesk on Aptos, Franklin Onchain" (10/4/24), "WisdomTree Connect Launched" (9/24/24), "More on Franklin MMF Tokenisation" (9/4/24), "Franklin MF Adds Arbitrum Blockchain" (8/12/24), "Fidelity Intl Tokenizes MF, Paxos" (6/14/24), "J.P. Morgan on Weekly Holdings, Treasury Repo Clearing; Fitch; OnChain" (5/2/24), "European Money Fund Symposium London, Sept. 19-20; Tokenized MMFs" (4/25/24), "CoinDesk on Tether Stablecoin; Paxos" (2/5/24), "Forbes: SEC Targets PayPal Stablecoin" (11/13/23), "J.P. Morgan on Stablecoin Shrinkage, Risks; Bloomberg, WSJ and NY Fed" (9/28/23), "CNBC on PayPal, Paxos' Stablecoin" (8/10/23) and "NY Fed on 'Runs on Stablecoins'" (7/19/23).
