Bringing Treasury-Grade Money Markets On-Chain
For much of the past decade, tokenisation has been framed as a technological upgrade. Assets were digitised, issuance processes streamlined and settlement accelerated. What remained unresolved was a more practical question: how to make conservative, yield-bearing liquidity usable within on-chain treasury operations without forcing capital back into the traditional banking system.
US Money (USMO), available via the regulated market infrastructure of 21X, represents a concrete step towards addressing that gap.
USMO is a tokenised note referencing the UBS (Irl) Select Money Market Fund – USD, a short-duration USD money market fund designed for institutional investors. The underlying fund invests in highly liquid, low-risk instruments and aims to preserve capital while generating conservative yield.
USMO is a tokenised tracker note referencing a traditional money market fund. While the underlying assets remain off-chain, the note itself is issued, settled and transferable on a DLT-based market infrastructure. This structure allows economic exposure to be integrated into on-chain operational workflows without requiring continuous interaction with off-chain settlement processes.
Institutional structure by design
The issuance of USMO follows an institutional role model. Black Manta Capital Partners (BMCP Securities S.à r.l.) issues the tokenized notes through a Luxembourg securitization vehicle, ensuring regulatory compliance and insolvency separation. SBI Digital Markets acts as the tokenizer of the notes and takes care of the distribution and custody of the underlying UBS Money Market fund.
CK Ong, Acting Chief Executive Officer of SBI Digital Markets, said:
“USMO demonstrates how money market exposure can be brought onchain whilst retaining the regulatory standards required by institutional investors. At SBI Digital Markets, we are focused on ensuring that tokenisation is supported by compliant issuance frameworks, robust custody arrangement and trusted distribution networks. Through integrating established funds with regulated DLT-based market infrastructure such as 21X, we are enabling tokenised financial instruments to meet the standards and expectations of institutional treasury and capital markets participants.”
With Tradevest being appointed as a market maker, supporting price formation and liquidity in the secondary market, 21X provides the regulated trading and settlement infrastructure, integrating primary issuance, secondary market trading and post-trade settlement into a single venue.
As Alexander Rapatz, CEO of Black Manta Capital Partners notes:
“USMO demonstrates how tokenisation, when combined with regulated market infrastructure, transforms conservative USD liquidity into an operational treasury asset. This marks a step toward a financial system where yield-bearing liquidity can move as seamlessly as digital assets themselves.”
Issuance, settlement and trading mechanics
Settlement takes place on the European Union’s only operational regulated secondary market for tokenised financial instruments, operated by 21X. Transactions are settled atomically, reducing counterparty risk and operational latency. While trading is currently subject to defined operating hours, the infrastructure is designed to support continuous availability as the regulatory framework evolves.
A defining feature of the USMO setup is the presence of an active secondary market. USMO is tradable against stablecoins rather than being accessed solely via subscription and redemption. On 21X, the instrument is available for trading against regulated Stablecoins, supported by continuous market making with a highly competitive bid-ask spread of around 3 bps, enabling efficient price discovery and execution.
This secondary market functionality allows treasury managers to adjust positions intraday, rebalance liquidity and respond to changing funding needs without relying on redemption cycles. For treasury applications, this distinction is critical. Liquidity that can only be accessed via redemption remains operationally constrained, whereas tradable positions retain their full balance-sheet utility.
Beyond liquidity mechanics, USMO reflects the yield profile of its underlying. The UBS (Irl) Select Money Market Fund – USD generated a yield of approximately 3.98% over the past 12 months, according to publicly available fund performance data. This positions USMO among the highest-yielding tokenised money market-linked instruments currently available to professional participants, while maintaining a conservative risk profile aligned with short-duration USD cash management strategies.
Taken together, tradable secondary market access, tight spreads and a competitive underlying yield transform USMO from a passive tokenised exposure into an operational treasury instrument. The efficiency gain does not arise from tokenisation alone, but from the integration of yield, liquidity and regulated market structure within a single DLT-based market infrastructure.
As Prof. Dr. Ralf Wandmacher, CFO at 21X, explains:
“The future of capital markets will be defined by how instruments are embedded into regulated trading and settlement environments, not just by tokenization on itself. We demonstrate with USMO how yield-bearing liquidity can operate with the same efficiency and transparency as digital assets, fully aligned with European regulation.”
Collateral mobility rather than tokenisation
While yield remains a key consideration, it is portability that determines its practical value. USMO combines both. Tokenised money market instruments can be held in wallets, transferred near instantly and, increasingly, used as collateral in downstream credit and derivatives workflows.
The Bank for International Settlements has identified tokenised money market funds as one of the fastest-growing components of on-chain financial infrastructure, with assets under management rising sharply over the past two years. Yet it also notes that usage remains highly concentrated, underlining the importance of market structure and liquidity.
Without a functioning secondary market, tokenised instruments remain effectively immobilised. Market making, transparent pricing and integrated settlement are prerequisites for collateral usability, a combination currently only be found on regulated trading venues
A practical treasury use case
For Web3-native organisations and institutional treasuries alike, USMO illustrates a shift in approach. Stablecoin balances can remain on-chain, excess liquidity can be allocated to a conservative, regulated underlying, and positions can remain accessible for collateral or liquidity purposes.
The efficiency gain does not stem from the token itself but from the integration of issuance, trading and settlement on a regulated DLT-based market infrastructure. That integration is what allows tokenised money market exposure to function as an operational treasury asset rather than a static investment.
As tokenised finance matures, products such as USMO suggest that the next phase will be defined less by experimentation and more by market structure. In that context, 21X positions itself not as a product provider but as the infrastructure layer through which tokenised cash and collateral can be deployed at institutional scale.
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Further articles for you:
Why the next leap in efficiency is not called tokenization but collateral mobility
Tokenization alone does not create efficiency. What truly matters is that tokenized money market products can move seamlessly as collateral within regulated, integrated markets.
The state of tokenization
Tokenization is no longer an abstract concept but an infrastructural evolution in which assets are implemented as digital, executable market objects on DLT.
The state of tokenization – Part 2
The focus shifts from definition to execution: DLT, smart contracts, and regulated infrastructures demonstrate how tokenization is already being adopted at an institutional level.
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References
- UBS Asset Management (2024).
UBS (Irl) Select Money Market Fund – USD – Fund Documentation and Performance Data.
Publicly available fund documentation and yield reporting. - Black Manta Capital Partners (2025).
Luxembourg Securitisation Structure Overview for USMO. - SBI Digital Markets (2025).
Tokenisation, Distribution and Custody Framework for USMO. - Tradevest (2025).
Market Making Mandate on the 21X Digital Asset Exchange. - Bank for International Settlements (BIS) (2025).
The rise of tokenised money market funds. BIS Bulletin No. 115. - Investment Association (2024).
MMF Tokenisation – Collateral Opportunities. - Boston Consulting Group (BCG) (2024).
Tokenized Funds – The Third Revolution in Asset Management. - Blockchain Research Lab (2023).
The State of DAO Treasuries.
