WisdomTree and MoonPay said Thursday they will build an access point that lets U.S. investors buy shares of WisdomTree’s tokenized government money market fund through MoonPay’s platform. MoonPay also plans to use the fund in reserve management for its stablecoin business.
The setup sends retail distribution of a registered U.S. money market fund through a consumer crypto app instead of a broker-dealer. It also places that fund inside the reserve stack of a payments company. WisdomTree currently offers the WisdomTree Treasury Money Market Digital Fund, ticker WTGXX, through its own WisdomTree Connect platform and direct broker-dealer channels. Neither company gave a launch date for the MoonPay access point.
WTGXX held $1.23 billion as of Friday
According to rwa.xyz, WTGXX held $1.23 billion on Friday. That made it the fifth-largest tokenized Treasury product and the largest of WisdomTree’s seven tokenized funds.
WisdomTree’s tokenized funds total $1.2 billion in a $15.40 billion tokenized Treasury market. The article places the firm behind Securitize and Ondo at $2.7 billion each, Circle at $2.6 billion, and Franklin Templeton at $2.5 billion. MoonPay said its network reaches more than 35 million accounts and more than 1,700 enterprise partners.
Fund to be used in MoonPay stablecoin reserves
The reserve-management piece carries the direct balance-sheet effect for MoonPay. The company said it will incorporate WTGXX into stablecoin reserve management, moving part of the cash backing into a fund whose shares are recorded onchain rather than limiting that backing to bank deposits and bills held with a custodian.
The companies did not say what share of reserves would be held in the fund. They also did not identify which MoonPay stablecoin products it would support.
Jonathan Steinberg, founder and chief executive of WisdomTree, said in the release: 「Money moves differently today, and investing needs to keep pace. Stablecoins are reshaping how people and businesses both hold and move value, and working with MoonPay as an access point can give eligible U.S. investors another path to deploy their assets into WTGXX.」
Caroline D. Pham, identified in the release as chief executive of MoonPay Institutional, said the work 「demonstrates how financial innovation can enable better experiences for investors in U.S. regulated markets and products.」 Before joining MoonPay, Pham was acting chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
MoonPay had already connected another money fund
MoonPay has done a similar deal before. In June, Franklin Templeton’s BENJI, a tokenized U.S. government money market fund, was connected to MoonPay Trade for swaps between stablecoins and fund shares, according to earlier reporting by The Defiant.
That earlier arrangement was aimed at institutional users moving between stablecoins and fund shares. The WisdomTree deal adds reserve management on top of distribution.
MoonPay built the institutional arm handling this work in April, when it folded MPC custody firm Sodot into a new institutional platform, as previously reported by The Defiant.
WisdomTree keeps expanding distribution this year
WisdomTree has been placing the same funds with crypto-native counterparties through the year. In January, it extended its tokenized funds to Solana. In April, DeFi lender Lotus added a WisdomTree money market fund to the reserves backing lotusUSD, while Stable Sea used WisdomTree tokenized Treasury yield behind business operating cash.
According to its page on WisdomTree Connect, WTGXX invests in U.S. Treasury obligations and money market securities and seeks current income consistent with preservation of capital and liquidity. The page shows no performance history and lists the fund as new.