One of Wall Street’s most regulated asset classes is being pulled into the orbit of digital finance.
F/m Investments, the firm behind the $6.3 billion US Treasury 3-Month Bill ETF (ticker TBIL), has asked US regulators for permission to record existing shares on a blockchain, turning a slice of the Treasury market into a proving ground for tokenized ownership.
Tokenized shares are conventional assets — stocks, bonds or private loans — whose ownership records are maintained using blockchain software, often with the goal of faster, more automated settlement behind the scenes.
The application wouldn’t change what TBIL holds or how it trades, according to a press release. The fund, launched in 2022, would still track short-term US Treasury bills and carry the same ticker. But behind the scenes, some shares would be recorded in tokenized form, wrapping them in digital infrastructure while preserving their legal and economic structure.
F/m’s proposal hinges on exemptive relief from the US Securities and Exchange Commission. If approved, it would allow tokenized and conventional shares of TBIL to coexist within the same regulatory wrapper, with identical fees, rights and daily disclosures as current shares.
“Tokenization is coming to securities markets whether we file this application or not,” Alexander Morris, CEO of F/m Investments, said in the release. “The question is whether it happens inside the regulatory framework investors have relied on for 85 years, or without that set of protections for investors.”
The application marks one of the clearest tests yet of whether blockchain technology can be grafted onto the core machinery of US asset management — not to displace it, but to quietly rewire it. From asset managers to clearinghouses, the industry is accelerating its push into tokenization, aiming to rebuild how familiar products are settled, recorded and owned, without reinventing the products themselves.
New York Stock Exchange this week deepened its push into using blockchain technology to allow trading tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds around the clock. NYSE, for its part, is looking to launch the new digital trading platform later this year, pending regulatory approval.
F/m Investments was incepted in 2018 and has about $18 billion in assets.
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