Wisdom Tree views tokenization not as an experiment but as the inevitable future of financial markets, offering superior functionality and a path to a more efficient, global financial system, despite current early-stage adoption.
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Jonno, thank you very much for joining
us here today.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> Of course. So, Wisdom Tree is one of the
few asset managers that didn't just talk
the talk, but you really walk the walk,
right? You have tokenized uh funds. You
launched Wisdom Tree Connect and
recently you even expanded to a chain
like Salana with all of your tokenized
funds. So when you look at the industry
today, do you feel like tokenization is
still at the experimental stage or are
we starting to hit more of a mainstream
and a a full rewrite of financial markets?
markets?
>> It's still early days. Um but it's not
an experiment. Now we have conviction.
So we believe eventually everything will
go on chain. Um, and you're seeing it go
beyond just the cryptonative community
to firms, trady firms like us, more than
just asset management, banks and
everyone. Um, but you can really see the
energy building and what drove ETFs was
better functionality and it is possible
to have better functionality on chain
and so um, we we're sure that it'll
continue to grow. Oh, I love I love that
analogy. We're personally a very big fan
of the analogy that ETFs is a better,
you know, form function almost and being
the same for tokenization. Um, but many
of your peers are still kind of catching
up to that view and that vision, right?
Uh, you are pretty advanced relative to
some of your peers. Looking back at your
own journey, what kind of lessons would
you have for other fellow asset managers
that are just getting started?
>> Well, one, I don't want to give them any
advice. I couldn't care less what they
did. Um, but the um, how we got here I
think is interesting. We were asking
ourselves the question internally maybe
8 years ago now. What could do to ETFs?
What ETFs did to mutual funds? And we
eventually came to the conclusion that
potentially it could be tokenization on
the blockchain. Now our perspective, you
know, when you think about ETFs, they
are the least friction on the old rails.
So it when we approached it, you needed
to have the opinion to make it better
than the ETF. How do you make it better
than what's best in the world today? And
it wasn't so obvious. So one thing that
Wisdom Tree did, we went big every step
of the way. So the fir I we couldn't at
first figure out how to make it better
than the ETF. So we did something very
much out of characteristic for
ourselves. We invested in a blockchain
infrastructure company called currency
which we ended up selling to DTCC but
that was um an unusually aggressive sort
of bet my career and my team's career on
doing this in a small public company. Um
but they had a vision for
complianceaware tokens where so you that
means programmable value right you can
so it's not just the underlying asset
that's important but the technology that
wraps it so the tokenization a digital
wrapper has functionality that is just
can potentially be much greater than the
ETF. So once we sort of saw that, we
went sort of all in on this and um it
served us well.
>> Awesome. Yeah, I think actually Naen I
don't know if she's in the audience
right now, but she's definitely here. So
you know, lots of friends uh in the
audience and I remember that investment.
I remember the TCC taking it over really
almost as a hallmark of oh okay now
people are getting a lot more serious
about these things in traditional
finance. Um but you know as much as
people are starting to take the
technology a lot more seriously uh when
you look at the total value in real
world assets on chain it's still a drop
in the bucket compared to you know the
total aum of asset managers I mean even
yourself you guys are are at 5060
billion I mean that's bigger than all
the tokenized assets combined in a way
so um part I think of that reason has
been that the tokenization efforts so
far really have focused slightly more on
retail I mean that's at least where has
focused also with their tokenized stocks
and ETFs should players be focusing a
little bit more on institutional
adoption and if so what would it
actually take to get to that hundred
billion dollar number so what I loved
about ETFs was it gave both retail and
institutional anal playing field if it's
either better or not better if it's
better then it's going to bring both
institutional or retail in. So, um
that's just the bottom line. Now, what
the thing about retail is they make
their own decisions. They can go
quicker. So, for Wisdom Tree, this is
about serving the onchain community and
because of the performance of crypto
notwithstanding the last couple of
months, but you know, crypto the best
performing Bitcoin asset class for the
last 15 years, you know, it's a couple
of trillion dollars. So you're going
after a large market, a lot of retail.
And for Wisdom Tree, we our vision was
one that the the platform DLT or
blockchain is better, could be better,
could be global. Um, but the crypto
investor, they didn't have any access to
banking or any other services. In fact,
over the last administration, they were
really shunned and put in a corner. and
they also didn't have any other assets
that they could uh invest in. Now, the
crypto community themselves, they're
full-on believers, so they don't really
diversify much. So, we're very in the
very very early stages. I would say
they're not interested in everything.
They're interested right now in yield to
offset their crypto speculation and
investing. That's really where it is
today, but over time it'll be more than that.
that.
our uh our firms have had the pleasure
of uh working together on OSG and the
Wisdom Tree to Tokenized Treasury Fund
and I think it's a good example of how
cryptonative players can partner up with
legacy asset managers that are really
forwardleaning. How do you think about
that distribution to that cryptonative
audience? You mentioned, you know, this
is about retail. We really want to make
these products better. um how do you
think about distribution and beyond
distribution how else do you think you
can partner with the crypto ecosystem
and with companies like um
um so
so
you know it'll be a number of things I
mean you could do marketing traditional
marketing it's a lot of business
development you know we had to start
with something called wisdom tree prime
because there was no place to place
tokenized securities so we had to create
something so that we could house our own
um assets. Um Wisdom Tree Connect is
allowing us to take our assets and
letting them travel to institutions or
to um self-hosted wallets. So, you know,
that's real in our opinion responsible
DeFi. Um I think um we for wisdom tree
also one of the other things that we got
very very early from secury was the need
for interopability. Um so we didn't want
to build our own chain. We just wanted
to have the best exposures that could be
on all chains. You just mentioned Salana
that we have I think that's our eighth
chain and I'm sure there will be more
over time. Um, and as long as you have a
value proposition,
um, that they want and what you want to
work with them, I mean, you you'll find
the way to do it. I mean, you're using
our products and, um, not cuz you like
me. So,
>> I do like you, but
>> he doesn't really mean it. So, the uh,
at le
you you know that you're we've come together.
together.
>> 100%. No, your products have been great.
Um, don't get me wrong. [laughter]
Um, what does success look like for
Wisdom Tree in the digital asset space
in 2026 and 2027?
>> I keep my job. That would be great. Um,
we want to continue to scale. So, last
year we went from like 30 million in
assets to about 750 million in assets.
Um, we want to get to obviously, um, it
right now we're still not making money
on our digital asset efforts, but we're
in line of sight of taking this to a
profitable business. It doesn't take
that much scale. Um, and I imagine that,
uh, so we just want to continue to scale
what we're doing. Um, and you know what?
When I think about my journey in ETFs,
um, I was not late. I launched in June
of 2006, but I was 13 years behind the
spider and seven years behind
Eyesshares. For Wisdom Tree, it was
important that we were actually first
through the regulatory door. We wanted
to be first and that and we accomplished
that really. I think you are, like you
said, others are experimenting. you
know, we're founder-ledd, we're entrepreneurial.
entrepreneurial.
In these big institutions, it can be
very very hard to um align
um the different FIFOs within a uh
within an organization, but we are
completely aligned on doing this. Um one
thing that we recently got from the SEC
was the ability to trade and settle our
money market fund 24/7. So that's a true
innovation where you have a real world
asset or a real world fund that is a
exhibiting the characteristics of
crypto. Um so it's a tremendous
a tremendous accomplishment many many
years in front of the SEC.
>> Oh I agree and and congratulations on
all the growth that you mentioned that
you guys had with the tokenized treasury
fund enabling it as collateral. I I feel
like we're probably starting to enter a
point and we talked about this Honda did
it a little bit in their keynote where
there are enough tokenized assets almost
available on chain. What's next is
really what can you do with them, right?
And what are the services that you can
build on top of those things? Is there
anything from Wisdom Tree that we should
expect in the next call it 12 to 24
months on that front?
>> Um I mean we're going to I mean we we're
we're tied to the banking rails. We're
um we have a stable coin. We have gold,
we have funds, we have model portfolios,
we have a we are offering a lot for us.
We actually have to attract more
customers. Um I mean that's really the
number one thing but really this is
bigger than asset management. This is
really about financial services. Um
financial services some of these banks
go back a couple of centuries.
So they built on legacy on top of legacy
on top of legacy. there is that
modernization that has to happen and
when it does happen then you'll really
see um all consumers would prefer to
stay on chain they'll have better
experiences in general whether it's um
getting interest on a second by- second
basis or things like that I mean these
are the trends that are happening better faster
faster
uh cheaper
>> could not have said it better myself
thank you so much that's a wrap
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