About Robert Lilien
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.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Robert Lilien's recent appearances.
Browse all interviews →
Transcript (10 segments)
J
Jonathan Steinberg0:00
Including the WCLD and the WCBR. Let's bring in WisdomTree Jonathan Steinberg for a closer look. Good morning to you. Let's talk about the blockchain-enabled ETF it provides a secondary record of shares on Ethereum blockchain. Explain to the audience what that means and why investors would need this.
R
Robert Lilien0:22
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. Just a little bit of housekeeping on that. It's very exciting to create blockchain-enabled financial services and our WisdomTree Treasury Fund is one of the building blocks that will be a part of the ecosystem as it emerges.
J
Jonathan Steinberg1:00
Okay. So my second question, why is it exciting? Why would investors need it? What about the current record isn't working?
R
Robert Lilien1:09
So, you know what's interesting when you think about tokenization, most people are trying to tokenize things like private assets that are things that don't really have a great experience for investors. We're trying to tokenize our standards are ETF. The best of the old rails. Nothing is better, more investor-friendly than an ETF. With tokenization we think we can make it better. So you will add lower fees, faster settlement, 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.
J
Jonathan Steinberg1:56
Jonathan, explain how this potentially shifts WisdomTree's business model. WTSY you say has no management fees or ongoing expenses. How do you make money and how does blockchain help you do things more efficiently?
R
Robert Lilien2:15
It's great. One is though we run commercials on CNBC, we have a direct to consumer. The wallet will be more so a direct to consumer channel. A bidistribution channel. Explicitly we're trying to diversify our revenue streams. We'll make money on transaction revenue, net interest income, and what's very interesting, you brought it up, beta on the blockchain. I'm not sure if there will be expense ratios. Certainly we're pushing a business model where there won't be. That's going to be extraordinary disruptive to the historical asset managers in the years to come.
J
Jonathan Steinberg2:59
You point out this is not about cryptocurrencies themselves.
J
Jonathan Steinberg3:04
Are there any secondary effects that you see on the cryptocurrency market here? People often have a hard time separating blockchain technologies from cryptocurrencies themselves. Some people might see this and think, WisdomTree is getting in on crypto, which is not what you're doing. But are there any effects you see on Ethereum itself?
R
Robert Lilien3:28
First, we do have crypto ETPs in Europe. We offer future-based bitcoin in the U.S. in some of our broad-based commodity funds. Mostly we're doing crypto, the asset class, in the United States through SMA's because of regulatory constraints. One interesting thing with WisdomTree Prime, one of the use cases where bitcoin, Ethereum can sit seamlessly with your equities and bonds and commodities, so that's really an innovation that we think will be very constructive.
