President & Chief Operating Officer, Wisdomtree
Search every verified Robert Lilien interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Robert Lilien, President and Chief Operating Officer at WisdomTree, has been involved in the firm's push into digital assets and blockchain-enabled financial services. In 2024, WisdomTree submitted a proposal to the MakerDAO community's Spark Tokenization Grand Prix, an RFP for tokenized Treasury and money market fund issuers. The company also announced the ability for users to spend directly from a money market fund on a debit card, a feature enabled by blockchain technology. WisdomTree has described its digital funds as registered mutual funds with share records held on chain, represented by tokens in wallets, and has noted that the immediate benefits of tokenized funds include liquidity, transparency, and standardization, with potential for 24/7 trading. In 2023, Lilien's colleague Jonathan Steinberg, WisdomTree's CEO, stated that the company is "trying to mainstream crypto, the asset class" and discussed the firm's blockchain-enabled financial service, WisdomTree Prime, which was in beta testing at the time. Steinberg described the platform as being built for "saving, investing, and payments" and said the company is "explicitly trying to diversify our revenue streams" through transaction revenue and net interest income, potentially moving away from traditional expense ratios. He also noted that WisdomTree is "trying to tokenize ETFs" to improve the investor experience with lower fees and faster settlement, and that Bitcoin and Ethereum can sit seamlessly with equities, bonds, and commodities within the WisdomTree Prime ecosystem.
“Wisdom Tree launched its first ETFs 20 years ago on the New York Stock Exchange with the idea of building both a better index, a fundamentally weighted index we call modern Alpha, and a better structure being ETFs, which are more tax efficient, more liquid, more transparent, and better standardized than mutual funds.”
“We came to think of the next evolution in the wrapper around financial products as something related to blockchain, like tokenized real world assets and tokenized securities that trade differently than traditional assets, enabling peer-to-peer exchange of value and a new way of thinking about financial services and cap...”
“Wisdom Tree Prime is a safe, spend, invest app that feels like any other neo-bank or neo-broker app, where all assets are tokenized underlying assets, including stablecoins, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a suite of digital funds that are all registered mutual funds with tokenized share records held on blockchain.”
“One of the things we recently announced was the ability to spend directly from your money market fund on your debit card, so you don't need to do two separate transactions; you can keep all your liquidity in a money market fund earning near 5% and just swipe that card directly, unlocked by modern infrastructure built o...”
“Digital funds are registered mutual funds sold by prospectus in the US with share records held on chain, represented by tokens in wallets, which differs from bare crypto assets like Bitcoin because there is a central register of ownership consistent between on-chain and off-chain records.”
“The immediate benefits of tokenized funds include liquidity, transparency, and standardization, similar to ETFs, with potential for 24/7 trading, better transparency of holders, and the ability to hold any asset anywhere in an ERC20 compatible wallet.”
“With Wisdom Tree Connect, institutional customers can manage an on-chain identity that allows them to transfer Wisdom Tree funds peer-to-peer to other wallet holders, enabling a step-function change in value transfer not possible with existing systems.”
“The convergence of payments technology and investment technology allows features like spending from a money market fund on a debit card, which was previously available only to wealthy individuals, to be accessible to day-to-day retail users, demonstrating real-world value enabled by modern technology.”
“We are in the second inning of the tokenization journey, starting to see product-market fit use cases for serving the on-chain community, both retail and institutional, which is a big and growing community of people who hold crypto and want to do more with it.”
“The Spark Tokenization Grand Prix is an RFP for tokenized Treasury and money market fund issuers from the MakerDAO community, representing pools of capital on-chain that want to invest in tokenized treasuries or money market funds with the conveniences and automation of on-chain holding, and we submitted a proposal to...”
“We're trying to tokenize our standards as ETFs, the best of the old rails. Nothing is better, more investor-friendly than an ETF. With tokenization, we think we can make it better by adding lower fees, faster settlement, and peer-to-peer exchange of value in a safe, secure manner.”
“WisdomTree Prime is being built for saving, investing, and payments. Really, a new relationship with your money is what will emerge.”
“We're explicitly trying to diversify our revenue streams. We'll make money on transaction revenue, net interest income, and what's very interesting is pushing a business model where there won't be expense ratios. That's going to be extraordinary disruptive to the historical asset managers in the years to come.”
“It's not an ETF. It shows you how early we are on digital assets that no exchange actually has the license or approvals for tokenized securities yet. So this can only be bought in WisdomTree's wallet, WisdomTree Prime, which we're in beta test now, rolling it out nationally in the first quarter.”
“Most people are trying to tokenize things like private assets that don't really have a great experience for investors. We're trying to tokenize ETFs, which are the best standards. With tokenization, we can improve the investor experience significantly.”
Will Peck, Head of Digital Assets at WisdomTree, explains how the firm is building the future of finance through tokenization and ...
Jonathan Steinberg, WisdomTree CEO, joins 'TechCheck' to discuss the company's new blockchain-enabled financial service, ...
It's an ETF play that's growing like a weed. WisdomTree is up more than 60 percent this year, but can it keep sprouting gains?
Sign in to search the full transcript archive, filter by topic, and access every quote from Robert Lilien.
The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →