WisdomTree's Has BIG Plans for Crypto ETFs & Tokenization with Will Peck

Hey, folks, we're recording at Chainlinks smart Con event and joining me is Will Peck, who is the head of Digital Assets at wisdom Tree. Well, great to.

Have you, Great to be with you, Tony.

Well we met, we were talking before the recordings at the ONDO event, and crypto seems to be booming. You know, what are your thoughts on how this market has grown? The industry has grown?

Yeah, I mean it's great.

It's also it's interesting you mentioned the ONDO event smart Con, which is you know, about much more than just like crypto exposures on blockchains. Right, it's about using blockchains as kind of infrastructure for financial services.

Right.

Crypto is infrastructure. Blockchain is infrastructure for more and more real world finance. You know, maybe real world is not like the perfect term, but like that's exactly what we're seeing more and more of.

That's what wisdom Tree is focused on.

So feels like a lot of energy you know, at these conferences in New York around that topic generally.

And then you have a lot of trad fy now looking to build with blockchain rails. They're launching et as, they are tokenizing, they're launching stable coins. What are your thoughts on how TRADFI has kind of taken over cryptow.

Yeah, absolutely, so, I mean my role, I'm head of Digital Assets at Wisdom Tree. So Wisdom Trees a global asset manager ETF sponsor. We manage north of one hundred and forty billion dollars globally today and the division I head up is focused on tokenization and stable coins, stable corn orchestration, and we manage about almost seven hundred million dollars I think six hundred and eighty million dollars in

Are you seeing a lot of demain and from clients for crypto assets?

Yes, I mean so you know, Wisdom Try is a kind of the ETF business. We have, you know, a bitcoin ETF here in the United States, and then we've also got a suite of crypto exchange tare of products in the European market, where we actually have a very we were an early mover in that market, have a very strong position there. So certainly there's demand from our traditional clients in terms of crypto assets.

That's a very competitive space.

And then what we're seeing more and more what my group kind of does is takes traditional exposures and brings them into the kind of digital assets ecosystem right and meets the needs of the on chain community who are looking for kind of yield diversification, a host of services that fund managers like ourselves can provide.

What are your thoughts on the Trump administration opening up four to one keys to be able to invest into different assets, including crypto What does that mean for your business from an ETF standpoint?

You know, it's interesting, kind of it's funny.

ETFs have been talked about going four to one k's for a long time. It's definitely happened because the things that ETFs kind of solve for weren't necessarily relevant in the four one k which is historically been dominated by mutual funds, and cis kind of getting very into the specifics there.

So it's interesting what is happening the d L.

I guess opening up four one k's for kind of crypto and other assets. Not like a huge impact for Wisdom Trues business today, necessarily sure, but just kind of a signifies the kind of openness to innovation that we're seeing now from the federal kind of administration and regulators.

Absolutely. Now you mentioned you have a bitcoin et P product. I'm assuming you have a theory M.

And in Europe we've got off suite of products.

In the US, we just have a bitcoin ETF.

So my next question will be are you planning to expand beyond bitcoin?

Yeah, I mean I can't really comment as a matter of policy on our product development pipeline, but you know we're certainly you know, you could read filings out there, things like that that Wisdom Trees involved in. But I think big picture, you know, it's certainly a very competit space in the US, and you know we want to put our you know, both good product development for the firm, good things for the firm, and also good things for our clients in terms of stuff we do.

What are your thoughts on the SEC's recent update to the generic listing for the ETFs? Is that good?

Bad?

Oh?

I think that's good.

I mean, I think it's kind of funny the ETFs you dated back historically. So I've been at Wisdom Tree for eleven years, like I was saying before we got on the air, and certainly seen a lot of changes in the ETF industry in that time, and I think generic listing standards are certainly helpful. Means that people don't need to go through kind of the nineteen before process like they historically need to do in the pasture, which was just a limiter in terms of doing things that

Otherwise it can become hard to behind the scenes.

Now you mentioned you're handling or doing tokenization of assets as well, right, and assistain clients to do that. Does it make sense for tokenized assets eventually find our way into ETFs or not necessarily?

You know, it's a good question.

I mean, I think we're seeing a convergence between these two things, and it'll be.

Interesting exactly how we get there.

I mean, what youuts really are is there a rapper that allows, you know, a investment vehicle to be listed on a national securities exchange trade in the secondary market that invests in some sort of underlying asset, right, and that the price between the ETF share is kept kind of in line with the value of the underlying asset through the creation redemption mechanism, through arbitrage by market makers, and that vehicle, that rapper has proven incredibly powerful in

So you know, the ets has been very powerful.

I think it's interesting with tokenization, where you know, in what you need to think about the specific use cases and problems you're solving for. But there's no need, Like, there's no reason to think that, Like, if you're bringing a novel asset that's tokenized, let's say it's a digitally native issued company in the future, there's no reason a ETF couldn't hold that if it were liquid.

I recently read that wisdom Tree debuted fourteen tokenized funds on the Plume blockchain. Yep, tell us about those funds and why to Plume block.

Yeah, so wisdom Tree's got fourteen tokenized funds total. We've tokenized them now on seven different public blockchains. So these are the same funds that are now available on Plume as well. Got it, and so Plume Railroad asset focused EVM blockchain that's really trying to drive adoption of real world assets within kind of crypto workflows. Kind of a

That's awesome. And then recently you appoint it be and why the world's largest custodial bank and oldest bank in America for digital assets infrastructure. Tell us about that partner.

Yeah, so B and Y is actual Wisdom Tree has a long history with B and Why.

They do a lot for us as kind of a fund manager as they're and they do like custody you know, backend servicing, sub advisory for us. So this is an expansion of our overall relationship with B and Why. And really the reason we did it is that, you know, we've got a retail app in the US, wisdom Tree Prime, that allows people to onboard through kind of a traditional onboarding process and then access all of wisdom trees tokenized funds, tokenized assets in there, and you can also move them

And I'm sure having the caliber of a b and Y Melon as an infrastructure partner helps bring in a lot more of the traditional investors. I mean, not trust certain crypto native firms, not necessarily that they're doing anything wrong. But there's bny Melon, it's been around for a long time versus others.

Yeah, I think big picture, you're seeing a convergence, right, Like I've heard the line, it's not trad fy, it's not DeFi it's just fine now. Yeah, where you're seeing innovative but established firms like B and Y like a Wisdom Tree is kind of maybe a more startup e field than that. You know, we've only been in our current for twenty years, but we're a listed company, you know, traditional finance institution and you know, trying to innovate, move

For sure. What are your thoughts on the tokenization market and how that's growing and expanding? It seems as a race going on right now to tokenize equities, money market funds, and so forth, like what you guys are doing, but gold and other precious metals and even real estate.

Yeah, so we're focused on the liquid side of things. So we've actually have our own gold token, we've got the money market fund, we've got equity funds, we've got some alternative vehicles like private cred and alternative income done in a liquid way. So like really doing what we've done well with ETFs and kind of bringing similar type exposures to the on chain market where there are real benefits that come with that twenty four to seven liquidity.

So look, this is.

What I you on a daily basis, Like, uh, tokenization we think is the future, and you know, right, now really serving the crypto native community. I think going forward, we're to see more and more people coming on chain and tokenization is going to serve them in ways that they just wasn't possible before. So, you know, like I said, managed, you know north of six hundred eighty million or thereabouts today.

And in a year, could we be at five billion dollars?

I don't know, Like there's a there's an immense opportunity in this new rapper, with this new technology. So we're fully committed to it and looking forward to continue to grow the market.

When you're thinking about tokenization and the assets that you want to participate with, and then you think of crypto as a global asset class, real time instant settlement and all that jazz runs twenty four to seven, are you also thinking about what other markets can bring in liquidity and things like that. Oh?

Absolutely, I mean I think it's kind of funny, like you think about like the an S and P five hundred ETF for example, like there's actually it's interesting, there's a different ETF and like the US versus the European market versus like the Japanese market, that I'll invest in the same S and P five hundred, right.

And that's just naturally how this developed.

But I think what you've seen with bitcoin stable coins is you can have the same asset that can trade globally twenty four to seven three sixty five, and so I think that's the future and that's the direction of travel, right, is can you bring global liquidity where the same asset, the same markets can have somebody from the US trading in them at ten am, you know, on a Friday, and still open for somebody in you know, South Korea to be trading at like eleven pm on a Sunday. Right, So,

And the other asset to Alrea. The other side of that is we need clarity, We need the market Structure bill. We know government is shut down right now, we're waiting for that to open up and the Senate to pass bill. What are your thoughts on the impact that we'll have on the market in innovation?

Yeah, it's a good you know, I think a lot of people here have been talking about Clarity Act, and you know, I think the general thing you're hearing from people is that, particularly for traditional institutions, that clarity just like having that regulatory clarity, gives them a lot of ability to actually do more beyond just the POC stage.

But like for a lot of us.

We're all not just like sitting around waiting for something to pass right, Like things have evolved such in a way that to the Genius Act kind of just greater kind of comfort around innovation that there's more you can do. So like for Wisdom Tree, like our products are live today, you can sign up for Wisdom Troup Prime. You can if you're an institution, you can onboard with this stim

And you know, we or off to the races.

Well you probably can give all the details, but what's on your road map? But what can we expect in twenty twenty six?

Yeah, I mean I think we spoke spoke a little bit about this on my panel this morning. I mean, at some level, I think getting our exposures to fit more and more into crypto native workflows in a very native way is of critical important for us, and I think we've made a lot of progress there.

We can keep making progress.

And then also like I think there's a whole universe, like these are all permissioned products right now, right like they're not available for like permissionless products.

But I think that I don't know if it's like that barrier's dropping.

But like the ability to serve more and more people within the regulatory perimeter and doing it in a responsible way and also a very user friendly use, good user experience way is completely possible.

So you know, there's gonna be.

Panel tomorrow that Chain Links putting on around compliance and things like that. So I think those two things going forward is really what we're focused on.

And also just continuing to grow AUM and adoption of.

Our products well great stuff, looking forward to the future updates, and we're gonna have to do a longer form conversation at some point.

I love that.

But thank you so much for joining me, my.

Pleasure, Thank you for having me.

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