Robert Lilien on digital funds
From WisdomTree’s Head of Digital Assets: Building the Future of Finance · · Crypto Prime
“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.”
On , Robert Lilien, President & Chief Operating Officer at WISDOMTREE INC, spoke about digital funds during WisdomTree’s Head of Digital Assets: Building the Future of Finance on Crypto Prime.
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.