BNP Paribas uses Ethereum for money market tokenisation pilot

Asset manager BNP Paribas Asset Management has become the latest TradFi giant to use Ethereum as part of a tokenisation push.

The investment arm of Paris-based bank BNP Paribas said Friday that it had used the top crypto network to issue a tokenised share class of a French‑domiciled money market fund.

“The tokenised fund shares were issued on the public Ethereum network with permissioned tokens ensuring that only eligible participants can hold and transfer the tokens, while benefiting from the strength and broad adoption of public blockchain infrastructure,” the firm said in a statement.

It added that it was the second such money market tokenisation trial it did — the first being in 2025 using a private blockchain.

“This second issuance of tokenised money market funds, this time using public blockchain infrastructure, supports our ongoing efforts to explore how tokenisation can contribute to greater operational efficiency and security within a regulated framework,” added Edouard Legrand, BNP Paribas Asset Management’s chief digital and data officer.

BNP Paribas did not immediately respond to questions from DL News.

Tokenisation trend

BNP Paribas isn’t the only one tapping permissionless, public blockchains as part of tokenisation experiments.

BlackRock and Franklin Templeton for years have used networks like Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Avalanche to tokenise money funds.

BlackRock’s BUIDL is right now the largest tokenized Treasury product, available on a number of blockchains but mostly running on Ethereum.

And New York asset manager WisdomTree also offers a fund on Ethereum. In January, it made its tokenised products available on Solana.

What’s next

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has since 2022 spoken about the tokenisation of all assets.

Now, Wall Street’s push into the sphere is creating more mainstream crypto use cases, with proponents saying that tokenisation will reduce costs and provide more accountability in the TradFi space.

Crypto asset manager Grayscale said in 2025 that the tokenisation market will hit a market value of $35 trillion by 2030 as putting everything on the blockchain — from commodities to private equity and credit — will become the norm.

Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.