Fidelity files for Ethereum-based US Treasury fund ‘OnChain’

Fidelity Investments has filed to register a tokenized version of its US dollar money market fund on Ethereum — joining the likes of BlackRock and Franklin Templeton in the blockchain tokenization space.

Fidelity’s March 21 filing with the US securities regulator said “OnChain” would help track transactions of the Fidelity Treasury Digital Fund (FYHXX) — an $80 million fund consisting almost entirely of US Treasury bills.

While OnChain is pending regulatory approval, it is expected to take effect on May 30, Fidelity said.

Fidelity’s filing to register a tokenized version of the Fidelity Treasury Digital Fund. Source: Securities and Exchange Commission

The OnChain share class aims to provide investors transparency and verifiable tracking of share transactions of FYHXX, although Fidelity will maintain traditional book-entry records as the official ownership ledger.

Fidelity said the US Treasury bills wouldn’t be directly tokenized.

The $5.8 trillion asset manager said it may also expand OnChain to other blockchains in the future.

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Asset managers have increasingly turned to blockchain to tokenize Treasury bills, bonds and private credit over the past few years.

The RWA tokenization market for Treasury products is currently valued at $4.78 billion, led by the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) at $1.46 billion, according to rwa.xyz.

Market caps of blockchain-based Treasury products. Source: rwa.xyz

Over $3.3 billion worth of RWAs are tokenized on the Ethereum network, followed by Stellar at $465.6 million.

BlackRock’s head of crypto, Robbie Mitchnick, recently said Ethereum is still the “natural default answer” for TradFi firms looking to tokenize RWAs onchain.

“There was no question that the blockchain we would start our tokenization on would be Ethereum, and that’s not just a BlackRock thing, that’s the natural default answer.”

“Clients clearly are making choices that they do value the decentralization, they do value the credibility, and the security and that’s a great advantage that Ethereum continues to have,” he said at the Digital Asset Summit in New York on March 20.

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