Carlyle-owned Calastone has launched its Calastone Tokenised Distribution offering to enable asset managers already using its platform to tokenize any fund on blockchains including Ethereum, Polygon and Canton. The key is it is a frictionless process that doesn’t require any fundamental changes to the fund or its administration. Calastone processes around £250 billion ($327 billion) in fund investments monthly.
“We make it possible to distribute existing funds via blockchain networks, instantly and at scale, without any operational upheaval or technical reinvention,” said Adam Belding, CTO at Calastone.
For asset managers, blockchain offers a fresh source of investors. Novel stablecoin issuers and blockchain protocol treasurers prefer to keep assets on-chain. Hence, they’ve been attracted to the likes of BlackRock’s BUIDL and Franklin Templeton’s FOBXX tokenized money market funds. It will also appeal to the crypto savvy wealthy and retail investor market.
“New pools of capital are forming on blockchain networks, and they are not being accessed through traditional channels. Our Tokenised Distribution solution gives asset managers instant reach into these markets,” said Julien Hammerson, CEO of Calastone.
Additionally, there are many new tokenized collateral initiatives which may mean that the range of assets that can be used as collateral is likely to expand and tokenized money market funds are likely to be on that list. An example of this is stablecoin issuer Circle’s recent collaboration with NYSE owner ICE. Circle also owns a yield bearing money market fund USYC which will be used by ICE for collateral.
Calastone has been leaning into blockchain for many years, with Belding proposing that one shouldn’t just tokenize the fund but also the component elements, the stocks and bonds that underpin it. But you have to start somewhere.
The smart contract based fund tokens are integrated with Calastone’s systems so that on-chain orders are processed through Calastone’s infrastructure. Hence, the tokens are automatically minted and burned in line with issuance and redemption.
