BNY Mellon deepens tokenisation drive with BitGo-linked BLIQUID fund launch
BNY Mellon has launched a tokenised money market fund, BLIQUID, built with BitGo, extending its digital asset push to UK and US institutions.
BNY Mellon, the custodian bank that oversees roughly $8.6 trillion in client assets, has launched a tokenised money market fund called BLIQUID, built in partnership with digital asset infrastructure firm BitGo. The product is aimed at institutional clients in the United States and United Kingdom, with the bank signalling plans to widen access to further jurisdictions.
A fund wrapped in blockchain infrastructure
BLIQUID tokens represent shares in a money market fund managed through BNY Investments Dreyfus, the bank’s long-established fund management division. Rather than recording holdings on conventional back-office ledgers, institutional investors will hold tokenised shares tracked on a blockchain.
BNY Mellon has built the product on its existing global digital transfer agency capabilities, infrastructure it expanded in October 2023 specifically to support the issuance and tracking of tokenised fund shares. The bank has framed BLIQUID as designed to support on-chain settlement while preserving the compliance and custody standards expected of an institution that administers more than 7.6 million investor accounts.
BitGo’s precise contribution to the launch has not been detailed publicly. Neither firm has issued a statement clarifying the division of technical responsibilities, leaving open questions over how custody, settlement and token issuance are split between the two parties.
Building on a longer digital asset track record
BLIQUID is not BNY Mellon’s first move into crypto-adjacent infrastructure. The bank became the first major US institution to offer regulated digital asset custody in October 2022, when it began supporting bitcoin and ether transfers for select clients. That platform has since served as the foundation for a broader institutional digital asset strategy, of which the transfer agency expansion and now BLIQUID form the latest stages.
The move places BNY Mellon alongside a growing list of established asset managers experimenting with tokenised cash-like products. BlackRock has developed its own tokenised share class, BSTBL, while Baillie Gifford has launched a tokenised fund known as BAGEY. Franklin Templeton has operated a tokenised money market fund on public blockchains for several years, giving it a longer operating history than most rivals in the space.
Regulatory boundaries will shape expansion
By restricting initial access to US and UK institutional clients, BNY Mellon appears to be operating within jurisdictions where regulatory treatment of tokenised securities is comparatively settled. Any expansion into continental Europe or Asia is likely to hinge on how quickly local frameworks for tokenised fund shares and digital asset custody mature, an area where regulators have moved at markedly different speeds.
For institutional allocators, a tokenised money market fund carries a more familiar risk profile than exotic decentralised finance yield products, since the underlying exposure remains cash-equivalent instruments rather than novel on-chain mechanics. That familiarity is likely central to BNY Mellon’s pitch: it offers a regulated route into blockchain-based settlement without asking clients to depart from conventional fund economics.
BNY Mellon has not disclosed the full technical architecture underpinning BLIQUID, and as competing tokenised products proliferate, questions over interoperability between different banks’ and asset managers’ blockchain rails are likely to become a sharper point of competitive differentiation.
Read more: BlackRock tokenises money market funds to meet GENIUS Act reserve rules
