The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved a special request from asset manager WisdomTree to allow shares of the Treasury Money Market Digital Fund to be traded with dealers for $1 on an intraday basis, regardless of the fund’s end-of-day net asset value.
Previously, investors in the fund, which trades under the ticker WTGXX, were required to trade at the fund’s NAV at the end of the day, as is standard for traditional mutual funds. The new structure allows transactions to take place 24 hours a day through a broker-dealer acting as a principal, with instant settlement possible on blockchain rails.
WisdomTree said the approval requires an exemption from the SEC and regulatory clearance from FINRA to expand the broker-dealer subsidiary’s activities. The new model allows for 24/7 liquidity while preserving the fund’s core structure, as trades are made against a dealer’s inventory rather than directly with the fund.
“This is a true innovation and improvement in the investor experience, and shows how blockchain can serve as a new set of rails for capital markets,” Will Peck, head of digital assets at WisdomTree, said in a statement on Tuesday.
WisdomTree also introduced continuous dividend accrual for the fund, which allocates interest based on how long each wallet held the stock throughout the day. This feature tracks wallet activity on-chain to ensure you don’t miss out on any part of your earnings, even during intraday transfers.
The company plans to first make this feature available to educational institutions through its Connect platform, followed by retail access through the Prime app.
The changes mark a step in a broader push to tokenize parts of the capital markets. Several large banks and asset managers are piloting blockchain-based systems for issuance and settlement of traditional assets, with the aim of speeding up settlement times and reducing operational friction. Tokenization refers to representing financial instruments as digital tokens on a blockchain, allowing ownership to be transferred in near real-time.
Money market funds backed by U.S. Treasuries have become an important test case. According to data provider rwa.xyz, there is currently more than $10 billion worth of tokenized U.S. Treasuries in circulation.
At the forefront of this is BlackRock and Securitize’s BUIDL fund, which has over $2 billion in total locked up and is a metric that reflects the dollar value of assets committed to on-chain products. Other products include those from stablecoin issuers Circle (CRCL) and Ondo Finance.
With the SEC’s approval, WisdomTree joins a growing group of companies seeking to bring traditional cash management tools to blockchain infrastructure while staying within existing regulatory frameworks.
