VanEck to launch its first RWA tokenization fund

Investment firm VanEck is launching a tokenized real-world asset (RWA) fund that offers exposure to US Treasury bills, developed in partnership with tokenization platform Securitize. The initiative places VanEck among a growing number of traditional finance firms entering the RWA tokenization space.

The fund, called VBILL, will be initially available on Avalanche, BNB Chain, Ethereum and Solana blockchains, VanEck said in a May 13 statement. The fund's minimum subscriptions start at $100,000 for investments running on Avalanche, BNB Chain, and Solana, while the minimum subscription on Ethereum is $1 million.

VanEck joins a burgeoning field of traditional financial firms that have launched RWA tokenized funds, with competitors including BlackRock and Franklin Templeton. In January, Apollo, an investment firm with $751 billion in assets under management, also launched a private credit tokenized fund.

With a market capitalization of $6.9 billion, US Treasurys are among the largest asset classes in tokenized funds, second only to private credit, according to data from RWA.xyz.

VanEck’s partner, Securitize, has tokenized over $3.9 billion in assets. In May 2024, it raised $47 million in a strategic funding round led by BlackRock.

Tokenization of real-world assets has many benefits that outpace traditional finance systems, including faster settlement times and liquidity to previously illiquid assets, advocates say.

Related: ‘Everything is lining up’ — Tokenization is having its breakout moment

SEC Chair Atkins on RWA tokenization

At the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) roundtable on May 12, Chair Paul Atkins compared the moving of securities onchain to the transition of songs from analog to digital. 

“Just as the shift to digital audio revolutionized the music industry, the migration to onchain securities has the potential to remodel aspects of the securities market by enabling entirely new methods of issuing, trading, owning, and using securities,” Atkins said.

“Blockchain technology holds the promise to allow for a broad swath of novel use cases for securities, fostering new kinds of market activities that many of the Commission’s legacy rules and regulations do not contemplate today,” he added.

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