BNY Mellon Unveils Blockchain-Based Money Market Fund with BitGo
BNY Mellon has launched BLIQUID, a digitally native money market fund represented by blockchain-based tokens, in partnership with BitGo. The fund is available to eligible institutional clients in the US and UK, with plans to expand further.
The BLIQUID tokens represent shares in a money market fund created through BNY Investments Dreyfus, the bank's established fund management arm. Instead of holding traditional fund shares recorded on legacy systems, institutional investors can now hold tokenized versions that live on a blockchain.
BNY Mellon built this on top of its global digital transfer agency capabilities, which provide the infrastructure for issuing and tracking these tokenized shares. The system is designed to handle on-chain settlement while maintaining the compliance and custody standards that institutional investors expect from a bank that services approximately $8.6 trillion in assets and over 7.6 million investor accounts.
BitGo's role in the BLIQUID launch remains vague, with no direct announcements detailing their contribution. However, the partnership marks another step in BNY Mellon's digital asset trajectory, which includes its digital asset custody platform launched in October 2022 and expanded global digital transfer agency capabilities in October 2023.
BNY Mellon is not alone in exploring tokenized products. BlackRock has been working on its own tokenized share class, known as BSTBL, while Baillie Gifford launched a tokenized fund called BAGEY. Franklin Templeton has also been running a tokenized money market fund on public blockchains for years.