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Inside WisdomTree's Tokenization Strategy with Maredith Hannon
Last week, WisdomTree unveiled its first tokenized private credit fund (CRDT), available to both retail and institutional clients. We spoke with Maredith Hannon, Head of Business Development, Digital Assets at WisdomTree, to learn more about the firm’s strategy.
Louis Tellier & Maximilian Vargas
September 19, 2025
First tokenized private credit fund: Last week, WisdomTree unveiled its first tokenized private credit fund (CRDT), available to both retail and institutional clients. The fund replicates the price and yield performance of the Gapstow Private Credit and Alternative Income Index, offering a regulated, onchain way to access one of the fastest-growing segments of the alternatives market.
Why it matters: With now 14 tokenized funds, WisdomTree is the most active traditional asset manager in the space. Its tokenized money market fund, WTGXX, has already crossed $860 million in assets, making it the world’s second-largest tokenized money market fund after BlackRock’s BUIDL. The rest of the lineup, however, has yet to gain meaningful traction.
“The idea isn’t to tokenize one product in isolation, but to build a full shelf of money market, fixed income, equity, and allocation strategies to create diversified portfolios,” said Maredith Hannon, Head of Business Development for Digital Assets at WisdomTree.
Interview: With her, we spoke about why private credit was the natural next step, why fund shares remain the most practical entry point today, and how the firm is building distribution rails through WisdomTree Prime and WisdomTree Connect.
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On why private credit is next:
“Private credit has become one of the fastest-growing areas in alternatives, but access has traditionally been limited to institutions. What we wanted to do with CRDT was bring that yield potential onchain in a tokenized fund.
The fund tracks an index made up of publicly traded investment vehicles that specialize in lending to smaller and mid-sized businesses, often paying out high dividends, as well as closed-end funds and REITs that generate income from credit markets.
For crypto-native investors, that means you can now hold private-credit-like income streams alongside your stablecoins, Bitcoin, or money market funds, all in the same digital wallet.”
On native tokenization vs. tokenizing funds:
“Today, the underlying assets we invest in are not natively tokenized. That’s why the most practical approach is to tokenize the fund shares. Even at this stage, it delivers the benefits of tokenization: 24/7 access, faster settlement, and onchain portability.
That doesn’t mean we stop there. Over time, as the underlying assets themselves move onchain, we’ll be able to shift closer to native tokenization. That’s the long-term goal. It would mean more automation, coupons, or interest payments flowing directly onchain, greater transparency, and potentially even same-day settlement.
For example, in our tokenized private credit fund, subscriptions can be processed the same day because the cash is immediately put to work. Redemptions, however, settle on a T+2 basis to align with the liquidity of the underlying vehicles. Distributions are currently made on a quarterly basis, reflecting how coupons flow from the portfolio.”
On driving distribution across retail (WisdomTree Prime) and institutional (WisdomTree Connect):
“We’ve built two distribution platforms. WisdomTree Prime is our U.S. retail super app. For example, you can buy a money market fund, and then spend directly off those holdings with a Visa card. The blockchain complexity is completely abstracted away.
On the institutional side, WisdomTree Connect is designed for B2B and B2B2C. Clients onboard once receive a KYC NFT tied to their wallet, and from then on they can access any of our tokenized funds within their existing custody setup. They can even transfer peer-to-peer with other verified wallets. It’s a way to scale adoption without forcing institutions into a closed ecosystem.
Most of the growth so far in 2025 has come from institutions using WisdomTree Connect — in particular stablecoin issuers, blockchain foundations, and CFOs/treasuries who need 24/7 access to money market funds and other yield products.”
On their stablecoin strategy for USDW:
“Our stablecoin, USDW, is already live. In WisdomTree Prime, it shows up as ‘cash,’ but it’s actually our stablecoin backing it. Today it’s used internally, but the roadmap is to open it externally, including on- and off-ramps into DeFi. So basically, you can think of USDW as the cash rail and our tokenized funds as the yield rail, with the goal of making movement between the two effortless.
That interplay becomes even more important in light of the GENIUS Act: with new standards for stablecoin reserves, our Government Money Market Digital Fund (WTGXX) will be fully compliant well ahead of the deadline.
This way, the same infrastructure that lets our clients shift seamlessly between cash and yield can also serve other stablecoin issuers who need regulated reserve assets.”
On their near-term roadmap:
“The next six to twelve months are all about utility and distribution. We’ve already proven demand with our tokenized money market fund, which now has hundreds of millions in assets.
The focus now is expanding functionality: deeper integrations with DeFi under the right regulatory guardrails, higher-frequency yield distributions, and broadening the range of funds available through both WisdomTree Prime and WisdomTree Connect.”
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