WisdomTree Sees Tokenized Funds Driving Institutional Adoption in 2026

Remy: Well, let's get to the big story breakdown. We're coming to you from the Ondo Summit 2026, in New York City. And right now I'm joined by Will Peck of WisdomTree. Well, thank you so much for joining me today.

Will: It's great to be with you.

Remy: Well, we're about to kick off Ondo Summit 2026. And there are a lot of topics that we're focusing on. But what are you most excited about and why?

Will: Yeah, I mean I think this is truly done a nice job of becoming a, you know, the real summit around tokenization in the space that's been a major focus of WisdomTree. I'm head of digital assets at WisdomTree, very focused on tokenization of funds. And Ondo has done an excellent job kind of bringing this all together with a lot of people very interested in this space across kind of the fintech startup community and also traditional finance institutions like ourselves. So very looking forward to the conversation.

Remy: Yeah, and of course, when we look at the outlook for 2026, January has been off to quite a start. But when we're talking about institutional adoption, the conversation isn't about what, and it's about how. So what are you doing at WisdomTree?

Will: Yeah. So, at WisdomTree, we're focused on, you know, WisdomTree is kind of a well known ETF sponsor, originally saw ETFs as a better technology than mutual funds, which absolutely proved true. You know, that was 20 years ago. And since then, trillions of dollars have flowed into ETFs at the expense of mutual funds. So we actually looked at tokenization as kind of the next evolution in the asset management wrapper, allowing people to have kind of a better investing experience or kind of providing asset management services to more people who couldn't otherwise access it. And that's been WisdomTree's approach with this. So we've got a suite of tokenized funds, tokenized real world assets that we make available to both, you know, U.S. retail investors, institutions globally. And we've had a lot of success this past year. We've grown AUM from, you know, essentially zero to almost $800 million. At the end of the year our tokenized money market fund has been very successful in that we've seen true product market fit there. And for us, it's about making these exposures work better for our customers. That means making them more liquid, more tradable, also expanding the onboarding options where people we can work with. So we're feeling very good about it. It's been a great year.

Remy: And I do want to ask you about multi chain deployment on Solana. So why the blockchain?

Will: Yeah. So our approach has been to do things on public permissionless blockchains. It seems obvious today that was not so obvious when we started this five years ago. And I think you know people like us and others have been focused on doing things that way. And so Solana is part of that multi-chain strategy. We want to go where there's client demand where there's you know provided these blockchains are meeting our risk frameworks and that we're technically think that they're good. Certainly that's the case with Solana. So we're on some other blockchains as well certainly Ethereum EVM blockchains. But launched on Solana last week and it was it was a great launch.

Remy: And of course, I do want to ask you about liquidity as well as settlements. So when we hear about the bigger exchanges, including the New York Stock Exchange announcing plans to tokenize assets, what does this mean? And how do you see the players and the ecosystem all working together?

Will: Yeah, it's a very good question. I think what you're seeing is there were some early movers like us, like in Ondo, who were working on this maybe 4 or 5 years ago. And then now, you're seeing a lot of the, like, bigger firms, like, we're traditional finance, but not like big in that sense. And, a lot of the big firms like New York Stock Exchange, DTC and others, announcing initiatives to try to, I wouldn't say catch up, but like, move in the same direction. And we're seeing that across the board where there are large institutions who have kind of key financial market infrastructure roles, kind of doing more in the space. So I think what New York is doing is very exciting. I think we're going to need liquidity venues for these exposures. And that's one of the big challenges today, is that they don't really have anywhere to trade in the U.S. regulatory perimeter. And I think what New York's doing is going to be one of the solutions to unlock that.

Remy: And of course, when we're talking about institutions, I do want to ask you about banking integration, in particular your partnership with NY as a banking as a service. So what does this actually mean and how does this affect stablecoin conversion fees?

Will: Yeah,absolutely. So for us, our retail app, we've got an app - WisdomTree Prime mobile app - that allows people, it's a wallet app, that allows you to buy wholesale tokenized assets. And previously in the past, the on chain component felt very disconnected from the kind of fiat rails, banking rails component. With this deal that we've done with BNY, where there are banking as a service kind of integration point, the fiat rails, the blockchain rails are completely connected, right. So you can fund your accounts with stablecoins immediately withdraw over like banking rails vice versa. So really bringing the connectivity together, we see it as a great kind of standardization point where you can come in with your USDC, your PYUSD, across different chains, fund your WisdomTree Prime account, buy money market fund, buy tokenized gold, buy whatever it is that you want that we're offering. And then let's say you've got to pay a bill. Well, you can sell it and then you immediately pay the bill. So it's like over banking rails. So that kind of connectivity between banking and on-chain kind of financial services has been lacking in the past. So we're thrilled that we can bring this forward with BNY now and feels like a very mission critical aspect of what we're doing.

Remy:Yeah. And finally, before I let you go, I do want to ask you about digital identity protocols. So what are you trying to accomplish here and why is it so important?

Will: Yeah, I feel like this has been talked about in almost a mythic sense for like years now where everyone's saying, oh, we're going to figure out like digital identity. And I used that term. I think some people take it to mean like, the government is going to have like some very like Orwellian-like digital identity for you. I don't I don't think about it that way. I think about it. How do customers be able to kind of like sign in with Google, but in financial services in a bigger way that they can share their information selectively, maybe on a zero knowledge basis, to get access to financial services in a regulated fashion that people want to provide. So I think if we're going to have kind of stuff happen on permissionless blockchains, but still meet kind of the first principles of like U.S. financial services regulation, it's going to require an element of know your customer, an element of AML, that you might not just be able to get in a purely pseudonymous on chain way. So for me, digital identity is about kind of piecing together, plumbing together, solutions across counterparties in the ecosystem to make a better experience there, where somebody is not trapped within their walled garden of their current bank, but can access products and services sold by lots of good financial services institutions without needing to provide new information each time. Well, each of those institutions can still meet their regulatory and just like legal obligations. So that's how we think about digital identity. And hopefully it's kind of something that really helps us here.

Remy: Well, Will it was great talking to you. Thank you so much for joining me as we kick off the Ondo Summit here in New York.

Will: You too Remy.

Remy: Thank you very much.