Wall Street’s New Obsession: Shiny Digital Tokens 💰

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Oh, good. More finance stuff. As if we didn’t have enough acronyms and anxieties already, BNY Mellon and Goldman Sachs are now messing around with “blockchain” and “tokenization.” Apparently, it’s the future of money, which, honestly, feels like a threat. Like my checking account is going to start demanding to be verified with a QR code.

Wall Street Eyes $7T Fund Sector With New Digital Asset and Blockchain Push

So, these very serious people – at the Bank of New York Mellon (catchy, right?) and Goldman Sachs (still sounds vaguely sinister) – have decided that $7.07 trillion worth of money market funds isn’t moving fast enough. It needs to be
 *tokenized*. It’s like they’re turning money into PokĂ©mon cards. “Gotta catch ‘em all!” Except instead of trading Charizards, you’re trading
 fractional ownership of something you’ll probably never understand. As of July 16, 2025, apparently this was a thing. It’s 2024 as I write this, and I suspect they just made that date up to sound more important.

They’re using some Goldman Sachs “Digital Assets” infrastructure – which sounds like a department consisting of one guy in a hoodie – to issue these mirrored tokens on something called GS DAP (I’m assuming it doesn’t stand for “Grand Strategy for Dominating All People”). You access it through BNY’s LiquidityDirect, which sounds like a direct line to a headache. They’re terribly proud to announce:

This combined solution marks the first time in the U.S. that fund managers have enabled subscription for shares of their MMFs via BNY’s LiquidityDirect and digital asset platforms.

That’s
 great? Look, I just want to pay my bills. 🙄

Blackrock, Fidelity, and a bunch of other names that induce immediate boredom are involved. The idea is you can digitally subscribe and redeem these MMF shares, while BNY continues to bother with the actual, physical money. Because apparently someone has to.

Mathew McDermott, the Global Head of Digital Assets at Goldman Sachs (yes, that’s a real title), says this will “unlock their utility as a form of collateral.” Collateral! Like, what are they securing? My dwindling hope for a comfortable retirement? Honestly, it feels less like innovation and more like creating problems where none existed.

Laide Majiyagbe, Global Head of Liquidity, Financing and Collateral at BNY (they really like “Global Head of
” don’t they?), added:

Mirrored tokenization of MMF shares is a first step in this transition, and we are proud to be at the forefront of this first-of-its-kind initiative.

Yes, well, *someone* has to be first. It doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. It just means they were the first to volunteer as tribute. đŸ€·â€â™€ïž

And, just to keep things interesting, BNY Mellon is now partnering with Ripple, which sounds like something you’d find in the cereal aisle. They’re handling the reserves for Ripple’s USD stablecoin, RLUSD. Because of course they are. It’s all very
 circular. Meanwhile, I’m still trying to figure out how to use Apple Pay.

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2025-07-24 03:58