If you've been following the intersection of traditional finance and blockchain, you'll know that tokenized funds are one of the hottest trends right now. These are essentially traditional investment vehicles—like money market funds—that get digitized as tokens on a blockchain. This makes them more accessible, tradable 24/7, and potentially more efficient thanks to smart contracts and transparency.

Recently, Token Terminal, a go-to platform for crypto fundamentals data, shared some compelling updates on this front. Their tweets highlight how big players from Wall Street are charging into the space, often hand-in-hand with crypto-native tech.

BlackRock's BUIDL Takes the Crown

Token Terminal spotlighted BlackRock as the largest issuer of tokenized funds, with its BUIDL (BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity) money market fund clocking in at around $2.4 billion in assets under management (AUM). For context, BUIDL is a tokenized fund that invests primarily in short-term assets like US Treasury bills, offering investors a stable yield while being fully on-chain.

What's powering this beast? It's built with help from Securitize, a platform specializing in asset tokenization, and Wormhole, a cross-chain protocol that ensures seamless interoperability across blockchains. This combo allows BUIDL to operate efficiently on Ethereum, the go-to network for many of these products.

Here's the chart Token Terminal shared, showing the explosive growth in tokenized AUM by issuer:

As you can see, BlackRock's portion (in blue) dwarfs the others, with the total market surging past previous highs in 2025.

Incumbents vs. Crypto-Natives: Who's Really Issuing?

In a follow-up observation, Token Terminal noted that the majority of issuers are traditional finance incumbents assisted by crypto-native startups. Only a minority are pure crypto-born companies. This makes sense—firms like BlackRock bring massive scale and regulatory know-how, but they lean on blockchain experts for the tech side.

From the data, top issuers include:

• Incumbents: BlackRock, WisdomTree, Franklin Templeton, VanEck, Apollo, Hamilton Lane—these are established asset managers with decades of experience.
• Crypto-Natives: Ondo Finance, Superstate, OpenEden, Midas, and a few others making waves on their own.

This hybrid model seems to be the winning formula so far, blending trust from TradFi with innovation from crypto.

The Top Deployments and a Playbook for Wall Street

Token Terminal also broke down the two biggest tokenized fund deployments: BlackRock's BUIDL and WisdomTree's WTGXX. Both share key traits:

• Issued by publicly listed companies founded in the 1980s.
• Invest heavily in low-risk US Treasury bills.
• Deployed on the Ethereum blockchain for security and liquidity.

Check out this detailed chart on AUM by individual fund:

If these products keep succeeding, Token Terminal suggests it could serve as a "low-risk" playbook for the rest of Wall Street. Imagine more giants tokenizing their funds, bringing trillions into blockchain ecosystems.

Why This Matters for Blockchain Practitioners

For those in the meme token world or broader crypto, this trend underscores the maturation of blockchain tech. Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) like these funds could provide stable yields and liquidity that complement the high-volatility fun of memes. Plus, as more capital flows in via Ethereum and similar chains, it boosts the overall network value—potentially benefiting everyone from DeFi users to meme coin holders.

If you're curious about the data, Token Terminal has a dashboard on stablecoins and tokenized funds where you can dive deeper.

For the original insights, head over to Token Terminal's tweet here. What do you think—will more TradFi follow suit? Let us know in the comments!