Archax Expands Tokenised Money Market Fund Offerings with BlackRock ICS US Treasury MMF

Archax, the first FCA regulated digital asset exchange, broker and custodian, has announced the expansion of its tokenised fund share offerings with the addition of the BlackRock ICS US Treasury money market fund (MMF). This new offering, created in partnership with the HBAR Foundation, builds upon Archax's launch of tokenised access to abrdn's MMFs last year, which were made available on both the Hedera and Ethereum blockchains.

The BlackRock MMF, along with Archax's existing offerings, are now accessible directly on the Archax platform and through connected networks. The first transaction of tokenised shares of the BlackRock MMF, which was also tokenised on Hedera, the open-source, proof-of-stake public ledger, was successfully completed across the Ownera FinP2P digital asset network.

In the current high interest-rate environment, efficiently utilizing cash, treasury, and stablecoin assets is more crucial than ever. MMFs provide a valuable vehicle for institutional stability and yield, due to their investments in short-term debt products, while also reducing single bank or stablecoin provider counterparty risk. Furthermore, by creating a secondary market for tokenised instruments, Archax enables almost instantaneous transfer of MMF shares throughout the day, allowing the tokens to be used for collateral movement in addition to traditional subscriptions and redemptions.

Graham Rodford, CEO and co-founder of Archax, stated, "Money market funds from different asset managers can follow different underlying investment theses – for example investing in short-term governmental debt issuances or commercial short-term debt issuances. Consequently, it is important to have a range of offerings available to cater to differing client needs. Adding more funds into our portfolio of tokenised shares of MMF offerings expands the flavours we have on offer and so allows us to serve a broader range of potential clients."

Rodford continued, "As well as MMF product breadth, product distribution is also vitally important. And so we are pleased to be expanding our partnership with Ownera to further leverage their FinP2P network for distribution of tokenised shares in MMFs and to help facilitate our first $multi-million trade on Hedera too."

Ami Ben David, CEO and co-founder of Ownera, added, "Using a simple Ownera Buy-Side Router, suitable banks of all sizes, wealth managers, asset managers, broker-dealers, RIAs (registered investment advisors), and exchanges can route transactions to the tokenized MMFs offered by Archax. This is another step towards realising the vision we share with Archax and other partners across the ecosystem, of a global institutional tokenized assets ecosystem with market-wide access, distribution and liquidity."

With the growing interest in real-world-asset (RWA) tokenisation, funds, particularly MMFs, have emerged as a prominent use case, serving both the Traditional Finance (TradFi) tokenised world and the pure crypto space.

Shayne Higdon, CEO of The HBAR Foundation, commented, "The addition of MMF shares tokenised on Hedera, enabled by Archax, is a huge vote of confidence. Hedera's unmatched speed, security, and low-cost infrastructure is ideally suited for the institutional-grade tokenisation of real-world assets made possible by Archax."

Archax is a global, regulated, digital asset exchange, brokerage and custodian based in London. Founded by experts from the financial markets world and backed by an accomplished advisory board, Archax offers a credible bridge between the blockchain-centric crypto community and the traditional investment space.

Archax is the first-ever firm to receive FCA regulation as a digital securities exchange, custodian and brokerage. It was also the first firm to be listed on the FCA's Cryptoasset Register as a VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider).

Archax has been designed specifically for institutional investors to trade in all types of digital assets, from cryptocurrencies to digital securities. It is built using existing, proven, resilient, scalable, high-performance exchange infrastructure, hosted in top-tier datacentre space, and integrated into the existing institutional trading workflow.

Ownera is a technology company delivering interoperability solutions to the world of tokenized assets. Ownera's routers enable global distribution and liquidity by connecting tokenized assets distributed by sell-side institutions to buy-side demand. The routers facilitate the messaging, negotiation and settlement of transactions between the counterparties and their various regulated service providers including custodians, broker dealers, transfer agents, cash providers, lenders and others. Ownera's routers implement the open FinP2P protocol originally pioneered by the company. Ownera is backed by strategic investors including J.P. Morgan, U.S. Bancorp, LRC Group, Draper Goren Holm, tokentus Investment AG, Accomplice Blockchain, Polymorphic Capital, The Ropart Group and Archax.

The HBAR Foundation supports the creation of Web3 communities built on the Hedera network, by empowering and funding the builders developing these communities. The Foundation's six funds - focused on the Crypto Economy, Metaverse, Sustainability, Fintech, Privacy, and Female Founders - each support communities within those areas, and the interconnectedness enables applications to participate as part of a larger ecosystem.