How have the world’s largest asset managers amassed billions on-chain, despite the friction?
Tokenized money market funds are already attracting billions of investor dollars for asset managers who are willing to embrace new rails. Despite onboarding and custody friction, capital is flowing en masse to leading issuers. The institutions arrived years ago.
Institutions Are No Longer Observers — They’re Live on Public Rails
The digital asset landscape has shifted decisively from theory to deployment. BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Wellington, WisdomTree and others are no longer experimenting—they’re fully operational with tokenized money market funds on public blockchains.
These live implementations demonstrate a growing readiness among incumbents to rethink asset issuance, custody, and liquidity, culminating in programmable finance.
$2B+ On-Chain Without Third-Party Distribution: What That Signals
Despite the operational friction of onboarding directly through a fund’s Manager or Transfer Agent and requiring token custody infrastructure and expertise, Qualified Purchasers (QPs) moved decisively to gain exposure to BlackRock’s BUIDL Fund, to the tune of nearly $3 billion AUM (as of June 2025).
This level of institutional demand without familiar distribution infrastructure is a clear signal that market participants are ready to adopt programmable payment, liquidity, and yield generation solutions.
The real story is behind the headline: institutional capital showed up despite clunky onboarding, unfamiliar custody processes, and zero access via traditional fund platforms. The capital flowed—fast. Demand isn’t theoretical anymore. If the product delivers on safety, yield, liquidity and utility, the right investors will figure out how to access it.
Qualified Purchasers Are Setting the Standard
Demand for tokenized Money Market Funds (MMFs) has emerged without mass-market convenience, meaning that a cohort of capital allocators, known to have a high standard for compliance, transparency, and liquidity, are now willing to tolerate substantial friction to align with their longer-term strategic needs.
They see tokenized investment vehicles as viable options. Tokenized MMFs are a fully compliant, yield-generating product with real-time settlement properties, embedded into a programmable infrastructure.
Distribution Friction Is a Real, Yet, Solvable Problem
The current pain points around onboarding, custody, and funding are well-known. But they are not inevitable. With the right connective infrastructure, tokenized fund issuers can eliminate blockers, simplify investor access, and expand distribution—all without compromising compliance or control.
Today’s Challenges: Custody, Access, and Onboarding
The underpinnings—blockchain and smart contract technology—are sufficiently mature to provide a robust and comprehensive solution. Accessing these technologies is still problematic, however.
As it stands, tokenized MMFs require more technological familiarity than a typical fund subscription, requiring issuer IR teams to educate on topics including wallet safety, redemption timing, wallet management, and more. The technology is ready, but the access-layer is still catching up.
This is where the disconnect lies. The product is ready, but the pathway to it is unrefined. Now we need infrastructure that meets institutions on familiar ground. We need to abstract away blockchain complexity without compromising security, compliance, or control.
Infrastructure as a Distribution Layer
The most advanced issuers increasingly recognize they don’t need to vertically integrate their entire infrastructure stack. Instead, they can plug into neutral, interoperable layers that streamline onboarding, preserve compliance, and abstract away technical complexity.
This shift directly responds to the rising demand for frictionless, auditable, and compliant liquidity systems. Neutral infrastructure lets issuers stay focused on capital and client relationships. When onboarding, compliance, subscription and redemption flows are handled seamlessly under the hood, distribution shifts from bottleneck to competitive advantage.
Stablecoins Are Driving Payments Utility and Fund Flows
Stablecoins aren’t instruments for holding dead cash or sidelined capital—they are fast becoming critical infrastructure for real-time payments, funding, and automated payouts. Tokenized funds that integrate with stablecoin rails offer their investors not only yield, but unprecedented access, speed, and finality in capital movement.
Visa announced a partnership with Bridge to make stablecoins available for everyday purchases, further showcasing the value of stablecoins for both retail and institutional applications.
Liquidity Optionality Meets Capital Efficiency
Settlement delays, T+1 constraints, batch processing delays, and other inefficiencies apply an opportunity cost to liquidity. Cash and traditional cash equivalents can take days to move across jurisdictions. Tokenized MMFs, especially those that offer stablecoin-based redemptions and subscriptions, offer a drastically higher level of capital responsiveness than traditional MMFs.
Entirely new liquidity strategies can emerge from liquidity optionality with instant settlement. Instead of holding idle cash or settling for large buffers, allocators can keep capital productive until the moment it’s needed. Treasury managers regain flexibility. Portfolio stewards gain exceptional capital responsiveness.
And for any institution moving between fiat, stablecoins, and on-chain assets, tokenized MMFs become the bridge asset that doesn’t force a trade-off between yield and access.
Operational Benefits for Fund Issuers
Programmatic stablecoin payments and smart contract-based back-office functions, such as subscription, redemption, and interest payouts, can save days of delay when administering assets, especially across multiple investor jurisdictions.
Smart contracts are cost-efficient and automated workflows that leave an auditable trail. For issuers managing redemptions, reporting, and cross-border complexity, tokenization means fewer operational blind spots and fewer manual processes to reconcile. It’s a leaner model—and a more transparent one.
Tokenized MMFs and yield-bearing programmable holdings transition liquidity from an opportunity cost to a performant asset on the balance sheet.
A Cambrian Explosion in Use Cases
Far from creating fragmentation, the rapid evolution of tokenized assets and stablecoin adoption is converging into a structured ecosystem of programmable finance. This is a moment of expansion—one where forward-thinking issuers can plug into a unified settlement layer, unlock new markets, and future-proof their product strategy.
Real-World Utility Is the New Benchmark
Tokenized MMFs represent a unique bridge between stable, compliant, yield-bearing assets and the composability and speed of on-chain finance. Fund rebalancing, payroll, corporate treasury, and automated yield optimization are just a few of the use cases that these products create.
Multiliquid: Solving Interop And Supporting Issuers
Multiliquid enhances the utility of tokenized MMFs by enabling 24/7 instant subscriptions and redemptions. It is being built to provide issuers full visibility and compliance enforcement while enabling broader market access. In doing so, Multiliquid upgrades tokenized funds—making them composable in tomorrow’s financial stack without compromising the integrity that institutions require.
Conclusion:
Tokenized funds are no longer confined to pilots or press releases—they’re in production, attracting capital, and unlocking new utility. Now the question is whether your distribution and settlement infrastructure will evolve with them. In the modern market, your ability to distribute across chains and channels is a unique edge.