Tokenized money market funds get more money-like
also: Meta and stablecoins, market patience, and a long list of podcast episodes
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” – Maya Angelou ||
Hi everyone! I hope you’re taking care of yourselves. February is almost behind us, we can do this.
Production note: I have another eye surgery coming up, so I’ll miss publication tomorrow and also on Friday. I will put out the free weekly on Saturday, back to normal albeit blurry schedule on Monday. 😎
PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨
As traditional finance and crypto converge, trusted data is the missing infrastructure layer. Allium provides this data foundation for teams like Visa, Stripe and Grayscale.
The latest whitepaper published with BCG, Stablecoin Payments: The Truth Behind the Numbers, examines how stablecoins are being used in the real economy today. The analysis estimates $350–550B in on-chain payments in 2025, led by $150–230B in B2B activity, with consumer flows contributing another $200–320B.
If you’re producing institutional crypto research or analytics, start with trusted data. Explore a live demo.
IN THIS NEWSLETTER:
Tokenized money market funds get more money-like
Meta and stablecoins
Markets: patience and the disconnect
Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links and more.
If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤
WHAT I’M WATCHING:
Tokenized money market funds get more money-like
I wrote yesterday about the SEC guidance on broker-dealer capital requirements for stablecoins – here’s another seemingly small technical regulatory tweak with a potentially huge impact.
The SEC has granted an exemption for WisdomTree’s tokenized money market fund WTGXX that allows it to be traded by an authorized broker-dealer at $1.
This may at first seem like a distinction without a difference since that’s the NAV money market funds (MMFs) aim for anyway.
The big deal is that MMFs usually settle in a primary market transaction – directly with issuers – once a day, with the issuers executing the corresponding adjustment in the portfolio of backing assets, and bearing responsibility for the fund’s liquidity.
Under the exemption, the fund can trade on a secondary platform at a fixed price of $1, with the broker-dealer providing the liquidity. In this case, the broker-dealer will be WisdomTree Securities (with settlement in USDC) so the activity is not leaving the firm’s ecosystem, but this is a step towards externalizing liquidity for MMF issuers.
Why is this a big deal? Because it means the fund can change hands without requiring an underlying the portfolio adjustment, removing an arguably unnecessary point of market friction. And since any sale or purchase of WTGXX does not need to wait for end-of-day pricing, it can trade at any time.
What’s more, since WTGXX accrues yield continually throughout the day – unlike typical MMFs that get returns calculated once a day – investors can use the token for intraday yield.
For now, this is only available to institutional investors, but the firm has plans to roll it out for retail participants later this year.
Here’s why this seemingly small exemption is potentially more meaningful for the stablecoin outlook than any number of adoption or new token launch announcements:
