Today UBS Asset Management announced the launch of its “UBS USD Money Market Investment Fund Token” (“uMINT”) which is “built on Ethereum distributed ledger technology”. We confirmed that it is issued on the public mainnet, even though UBS Tokenize supports both public and private blockchains.
The Singapore fund will only be available through authorized distribution partners, with DigiFT as the first one. That’s the case for most regulated entities, including BlackRock’s BUIDL money market fund where Securitize is a partner.
“We have seen growing investor appetite for tokenized financial assets across asset classes,” said Thomas Kaegi, Co-Head of UBS Asset Management APAC. “Through leveraging our global capabilities and collaborating with peers and regulators, we can now provide clients with an innovative solution.”
Tokenized money market funds such as BUIDL, Franklin Templeton’s FOBXX, and now uMINT, currently mainly target the crypto investor class. The funds provide a safe place to park cash and earn yield. Apart from prime brokers and stablecoin issuers, DigiFT envisages tokenized money market funds as potentially being used as a low risk asset within a structured product, or as collateral for crypto derivatives margin. Another tokenized money market fund, DRW-affiliate Hashnote, was recently accepted as collateral by crypto derivatives exchange Deribit.
However, in the future there will be a broader demand for these sorts of funds, enabling the ability to switch in and out of the funds almost instantly. That compares to typical funds that tend to have once a day redemptions. This feature is appealing beyond crypto investors to corporate treasurers and institutions.
UBS and tokenization
The uMint fund is structured as a Singapore variable capital company and is only available to accredited investors. Tokens are transferrable between KYC’d and whitelisted clients. UBS has not imposed any minimum investment amount, although DigiFT might. The token itself uses Switzerland’s CMTA standard.
Meanwhile, UBS Asset Management has been active in tokenization for some time. Last year UBS Hong Kong worked with Bank of China Investment (BOCI) for BOCI’s issuance of CNH 200 million ($28m) in digital structured notes on the Ethereum public blockchain.
As part of Singapore’s Project Guardian initiative, UBS has engaged in several pilots. These included the pilot issuance of a tokenized money market fund by UBS Asset Management on the Ethereum blockchain using a Singapore variable capital company (VCC) structure. Plus, the bank was involved in the first institutional cross border repo trade on a public blockchain in conjunction with DBS and SBI Digital Asset Holdings.
UBS is also engaged in tokenized cash. It was one of the founders of Fnality, the institutional settlement network that tokenizes balances held at a central bank account.
Update: added that DigiFT is the first authorized distribution partner and included more details about uMint.
