Tokenized money market funds are no longer being treated simply as yield products. They are starting to serve as an intermediate layer in institutional digital cash systems. By May 2026, tokenized Treasury and money market funds had grown to about $10 billion in combined assets, and BlackRock’s BUIDL alone accounted for roughly 40% of that market. Around the same time, Hong Kong changed the model for tokenized funds from one limited to subscriptions and redemptions to one that can support 24/7 trading, while banks in Singapore began using tokenized money fund shares as collateral for credit.
The contest now goes beyond assets under management. The real question is who can make these digital fund shares circulate across banks, trading platforms and collateral systems, turning a blockchain product into a working entry point for institutional capital.
United States: linking tokenized funds to stablecoin reserves
The US has moved first and furthest in this segment. In 2021, Franklin Templeton launched the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, using blockchain to record fund shares. It was one of the earliest attempts to digitize a traditional registered fund.
BlackRock followed in 2024 with BUIDL, which invests in US government securities, cash and repurchase agreements. In a little over a year, the fund climbed to nearly $3 billion in size, expanded across more than eight public blockchains, and was approved by multiple derivatives platforms as eligible collateral. Franklin Templeton’s BENJI, with about $828 million in assets, became the world’s first US-registered mutual fund to use a public blockchain as its official system of record. JPMorgan also rolled out two tokenized money market fund products, MONY and JLTXX, between late 2025 and May 2026.
The latest step stands out. JPMorgan’s JLTXX is deployed directly on Ethereum and is designed in part for stablecoin issuers that need reserve assets under the US stablecoin regulatory framework set out in the GENIUS Act. That creates a new loop: stablecoins need compliant reserve assets, those reserves move into money market funds, the funds generate yield, and fund shares can then move into onchain trading and settlement networks.
At that point, this is no longer a simple case of putting a fund onchain. Traditional financial assets begin to function as base-layer assets inside digital currency systems. For firms such as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and JPMorgan, tokenization is not only about launching another product. It is also about holding on to the asset management gate in the next phase of digital finance.
Europe and the UK: regulation comes first
If the US is competing on scale, Europe is competing on how well tokenized funds can fit inside existing regulatory structures.
France-based Spiko is one of the earlier examples in Europe. In 2024, it launched two tokenized money market funds investing in short-dated US dollar and euro sovereign debt, making them among the earlier approved products of this type in the European Union. In 2025, the company raised $22 million in a Series A round and focused on corporate idle cash management as its main use case, aiming to help businesses move cash sitting in bank accounts into short-term government debt strategies with less friction.
By 2026, traditional asset managers had started to move in as well. UK asset manager Schroders received Irish regulatory approval to launch an onchain share class for a US dollar money market fund, with redemptions and share transfers to be handled through JPMorgan’s blockchain platform Kinexys. Tokenization, in that sense, is starting to move from pilot status into formal product lines.
The UK is taking a somewhat different route. Rather than focusing on the number of products, the Financial Conduct Authority is looking at whether market rules themselves need to change once funds, bonds, trading and settlement all move into digital environments. The position the UK wants is closer to the role London has played in global finance for decades: not only offering products, but shaping the rules for how the next generation of market infrastructure operates.
Singapore: fund shares move into collateral use
Singapore has moved faster than many expected. In November 2025, Franklin Templeton and DBS launched Singapore’s first money market fund using tokenized registration, the Franklin Onchain U.S. Dollar Short-Term Money Market Fund. It received approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore and was first offered to DBS wealth clients and accredited investors.
The more important shift came through follow-up arrangements. In September 2025, DBS, Franklin Templeton and US blockchain company Ripple entered a partnership to explore trading and lending solutions that combine tokenized money market funds with the RLUSD stablecoin. DBS planned to let eligible clients trade fund shares and then extend their use into credit collateral.
In June this year, Singapore quant fund Calais used shares of a tokenized UBS money market fund as over-the-counter settlement collateral to support crypto asset trading on Bybit. That marked another instance of tokenized money market funds entering collateral systems tied to crypto trading and settlement.
Taken together, these steps suggest that the commercial value of tokenized money market funds may not rest mainly on yield. It may rest on whether they can serve as a new class of high-quality digital collateral. Once a money market fund can be pledged, borrowed against and used in settlement, it stops being just an investment product and becomes part of market infrastructure.
Hong Kong, China: opening tokenized funds to 24/7 trading
Hong Kong, China has also moved quickly over the past six months. On April 20, 2026, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission announced a new regulatory framework allowing tokenized SFC-authorized investment products to trade on licensed virtual asset trading platforms in the secondary market. The first products are expected to be tokenized money market funds. Ye Zhiheng, executive director of intermediaries at the SFC, said this is the world’s first mechanism to provide a clear regulatory framework for secondary trading in tokenized funds.
The significance is straightforward. Products such as BUIDL and BENJI have largely remained subscription-and-redemption vehicles, where investors transact at net asset value rather than trade continuously like equities or ETFs. Hong Kong is trying to convert the money fund from an onchain holding product into a standardized digital security that can trade 24/7, bringing its market logic closer to ETFs and listed open-ended funds.
SFC Chief Executive Officer Julia Leung said the new measures would allow tokenized traditional securities products to trade at night and on weekends, with round-the-clock liquidity supported through regulated stablecoins and tokenized deposits.
The data point to a fast shift. Since the SFC first set out its tokenization framework at the end of 2023, 13 tokenized products had been offered to the public by March 2026. Their total assets under management rose about sevenfold in one year to HK$10.7 billion. Data from the Financial Services Development Council show that the market value of tokenized funds in Hong Kong jumped from about $2 billion in 2024 to more than $8 billion in 2025.
At the same time, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s tokenized asset sandbox, Project Ensemble, has entered a new stage, covering the trading of tokenized assets including money market funds and the use of tokenized deposits for settlement. The issue regulators are focusing on is changing as well: not only how to digitize fund shares, but how money settles once those shares become digital. One is product innovation. The other is infrastructure design.
Issuers in Hong Kong are taking different routes
On the issuer side, more than one player is moving early. In February 2025, ChinaAMC (Hong Kong) launched the first tokenized fund in the Asia-Pacific region open to retail investors, the HKD Digital Money Fund. In July that year, it added a USD Digital Money Fund and an RMB Digital Money Fund, with the RMB product described as the world’s first. That gave ChinaAMC (Hong Kong) a three-currency tokenized fund lineup covering HKD, USD and RMB.
In June this year, CSOP partnered with HSBC to launch an unlisted tokenized share class for a Hong Kong dollar money market ETF and signed a memorandum of understanding with Hong Kong virtual asset trading platform OSL. It is a clear example of a large traditional issuer moving in after the regulatory opening.
Another route is lighter. Finloop, under Fosun Wealth, connected FUIDL, a digitized share product linked to an AAA-rated US dollar money market fund, to the Conflux network. For public blockchains, that kind of partnership matters as well. As more traditional assets move onchain, public chains may take on a role beyond hosting digital asset trading and become part of the infrastructure for moving real financial assets.
From ChinaAMC (Hong Kong)’s multi-currency lineup, to CSOP working with HSBC and OSL, to Finloop choosing a public-chain partnership model, what has emerged in Hong Kong over the past six months is a market where asset managers, banks, trading venues and blockchains are all trying to find their place under one new set of rules. The city may not have the world’s largest money fund market, but it is trying to position itself as an intermediate node for digital cash flows in Asia.
Retail investors are starting to see the effects
These changes may look like an institutional game, but some products have already reached ordinary investors. ChinaAMC (Hong Kong)’s HKD Digital Money Fund is open to retail subscriptions. DBS’s tokenized money market fund in Singapore is aimed at wealth clients and accredited investors, but it is no longer a product reserved for institutions alone.
For those investors, the most direct changes come in two forms.
- First, the time window for subscriptions, redemptions and trading expands beyond normal banking days, which gives investors more flexibility in moving idle cash.
- Second, these products still mainly invest in short-term government debt and bank deposits, so their yield and risk profile remain close to those of traditional money market funds. The added layer is a digital wrapper that can be traded more freely and, in some cases, accepted as collateral by platforms.
That means investors do not need to understand blockchain mechanics in detail to start benefiting indirectly from the liquidity changes tied to this competition. The more important issue is who controls the issuance and custody of that digital wrapper, because that determines whose rules the money ultimately falls under.
The next contest is broader than funds alone
The US has shown that large asset managers can move funds onchain. Europe is trying to bring the sector into formal regulation. Singaporean banks are already using tokenized fund shares as collateral. Hong Kong is trying to place issuers, banks and trading venues inside one market structure. The paths differ, but they point in the same direction: money market funds are shifting from yield tools into an intermediate layer of institutional digital cash systems.
The US has the first-mover edge on scale, but that does not mean it will write every rule. Once tokenized money market funds really take on this role, their rivals will not be limited to other funds. They will face competition from bank deposits, stablecoins and short-term government debt, all of which sit closer to the core of cash management.
The unresolved question is what happens when money market funds, bank deposits and digital currencies begin to share the same network. In that environment, the first players to learn how to use the network may gain access before the players with the deepest pools of capital do.
