Coinbase Joins Tokenized Money Market Fund Craze, Hamilton Lane First to Launch Fund on Solana

Coinbase's asset management arm is creating a tokenized money market fund whilst Hamilton Lane becomes the first asset manager to launch a fund on Solana.

Earlier this month, BlackRock's BUIDL was the first tokenized treasury product to hit $500 million in assets, despite only launching in March.

Franklin Templeton has also been a leader in tokenization, the process of converting real-world assets like funds and bonds into digital tokens. In 2021, the firm launched the first money market fund available on-chain using the Stellar network.

Coinbase, which received in-principle approval from an Abu Dhabi regulator to tokenize traditional assets on Base, is now looking to jump in on the craze. Bermuda-based Apex Group is working with Coinbase to facilitate its tokenized fund.

Meanwhile, Hamilton Lane has partnered with Web3 protocol, Libre, to launch a private credit fund on the Solana blockchain. Investors are now able to access Hamilton Lane's Senior Credit Opportunities Fund (SCOPE) on the blockchain.

Libre offers the backbone infrastructure by connecting the tokenized RWAs to users, allowing accredited investors on blockchains to access “top-tier funds on-chain in a fully compliant manner as well as ancillary services for secondary trading and collateralized lending, where available,” according to a statement.

Although Solana users were able to access tokenized funds via Ondo Finance in the form of US treasury bills, Hamilton Lane's offering marks the first institutional fund launched directly on Solana.

“This is for the decentralized finance natives. We believe that this is just a start of a portion of the financial asset class that will be available to a new audience with a different risk return profile,” Hamilton Lane's head of digital assets, Victor Jung, said.