SEC Approves 24/7 Trading for Tokenized Money Market Fund
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has approved a plan from asset manager WisdomTree to allow 24/7 trading and instant settlement for its tokenized money market fund. The move sets a precedent for on-chain fund operations within the U.S. regulatory perimeter. WisdomTree also launched dealer-principal trading for the fund, a structure designed to deepen liquidity and bridge on-chain funds with DeFi lending protocols.
- The specific fund is the WisdomTree Treasury Money Market Digital Fund (WTGXX), which holds approximately $730 million in assets and invests in short-term government securities. It is a regulated fund registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, a structure that provides specific investor protections. - The SEC granted "exemptive relief," which was necessary to allow for secondary market trading at a fixed $1.00 net asset value (NAV) at any time, a departure from the traditional mutual fund model of only trading at the end-of-day NAV. This is the first time such relief has been granted for this type of 24/7, dealer-based trading model. - WisdomTree’s affiliated broker-dealer, WisdomTree Securities, received separate approval from FINRA to act as a principal dealer, providing liquidity from its own inventory to facilitate these 24/7 trades. Institutional trades will initially settle using USDC. - This new structure is designed to eliminate T+1 settlement delays, allowing institutional investors to move out of cash and into a yield-bearing instrument in real-time, reducing cash drag. - To complement 24/7 trading, WisdomTree introduced a "continuous dividend accrual" feature that uses blockchain timestamps to calculate and allocate interest income based on how long a specific wallet holds the tokens, even for intraday periods. - The fund's shares are available on multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, and Optimism, and can be held in self-custodied wallets, enabling peer-to-peer transfers between whitelisted addresses. - The broader tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market, excluding stablecoins, grew by approximately 85% year-over-year to reach $15.2 billion by the end of 2024. The tokenized Treasury bills market alone expanded from $100 million in January 2023 to around $7.5 billion by mid-2025. - This move places WisdomTree in direct competition with other major financial institutions entering the tokenized fund space, such as BlackRock with its BUIDL fund and Franklin Templeton's BENJI fund, as well as recent European entrants like BNP Paribas.
