Wall Street Financial Services Firm Lazard Plans to Create Tokenized Funds with Bitfinex Securities

Tokenization of conventional financial products is a booming sector within the digital asset industry, with BlackRock, HSBC and now Lazard among the global firms entering the space.

Wall Street financial services firm Lazard is planning to create tokenized funds with Bitfinex Securities and SkyBridge Invest, according to a Friday announcement.

The tokenized funds will be set up and issued under Kazakhstan's financial services law, under regulatory oversight of Astana Financial Services Authority (AFSA), where SkyBridge and Bitfinex are licensed to operate. Bitfinex Securities will be responsible for the tokenization process, while SkyBridge will act as broker and manager of the tokenized fund. The products will be available to retail users, but with certain geographic limitations, and available to be purchased with Tether's stablecoin (USDT).

Representatives of the companies involved signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) toward creating the tokenized funds on Friday in Lugano, Switzerland at a side event during the Plan B conference.

The vehicle will offer exposure in a "fund of funds" structure to various existing Lazard-managed funds focused on global equities and emerging market equities, which have been available only to professional investors and institutions before, Matthias Kruse, managing director at Lazard, told CoinDesk.

"We are a B2B [business-to-business] investment firm, and this is a good way for us to service retail investors," Kruse said. Kruse also touted tokenization as a process that improves efficiency, liquidity and helps lower operational costs.

Tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) is a rapidly growing sector in the intersection of digital assets and traditional finance that involves placing assets such as bonds, credit and funds on blockchain rails. Participants do so in pursuit of faster settlements and increased efficiency compared to traditional financial plumbing.

The tokenization trend came to the forefront this year with global banks and asset managers, including BlackRock, HSBC starting offering tokenized products. The RWA market is poised to become a multi-trillion dollar market over the coming years, according to McKinsey, BCG, 21Shares and Bernstein.

Lazard's asset management business has $245 billion of assets under management (AUM). SkyBridge Invest is a Kazakhstan-based investment services firm, different from SkyBridge Capital of veteran Wall Street hedge funder Anthony Scaramucci. Bitfinex Securities is a licensed trading venue in El Salvador and Kazakhstan. Bitfinex Securities is the tokenization platform arm of crypto trading venue Bitfinex.