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Fund tokenisation is moving from experimentation into operational deployment. What was once treated as a specialist digital initiative is now being applied to regulated funds, real investors, and live servicing environments. The result is a fund operating model that runs continuously, reduces friction, and supports broader access without changing the underlying investment strategy.
These themes were explored during the Apex Digital 3.0 webinar Tokenisation and the always-on fund industry, where asset managers, infrastructure providers, and digital asset specialists examined how tokenisation is being used in practice. Rather than focusing on future promise, the discussion centred on where traditional fund structures struggle and how on-chain infrastructure is already addressing those limits.
At its core, tokenisation represents ownership of a fund on blockchain infrastructure. The fund, its assets, and its regulatory obligations remain unchanged. What shifts is the operational layer, including subscriptions, redemptions, transfers, and settlement.
Settlement friction as a driver of change
Traditional fund operations remain constrained by batch processing, cutoff time, and manual reconciliation. These issues are magnified for managers operating across jurisdictions, where settlement cycles, banking holidays, and custody arrangements vary.
During the webinar, Peter Martini, Managing Director at SkyBridge Capital, was direct about the operational impact. “The biggest pain point is typically in settlements,” he said, pointing to the friction created when managing exposure across digital assets, exchange-traded products, public markets, and private vehicles. Settlement delays do more than slow transactions. They tie up capital, complicate liquidity planning, and increase operational costs.
Tokenisation addresses these constraints by allowing fund units to transfer on-chain with near-immediate settlement. As Daniel Coheur, Global Head of Digital Assets at Apex Group, explained, the objective is to move “away from batch processing and cutoff time so that subscriptions, redemptions, and transfers can happen instantly, 24 by seven.”
Infrastructure that stays out of the way
A recurring theme throughout the discussion was that effective financial infrastructure should remain invisible to investors. Morgan Krupetsky, Vice President of OnChain Finance at Ava Labs, described tokenisation as “a technology enablement tool,” while Daniel stressed that “it should not be an investor concern to deal with the technology.”
This perspective reframes tokenisation away from product innovation and towards operational design. Investors continue to focus on risk, return, and liquidity. Managers focus on capital formation and servicing. The switch is that the infrastructure simply supports those objectives more efficiently.
For tokenised funds to operate at institutional scale, compliance must be embedded directly into the infrastructure. Identity checks, transfer restrictions, and investor eligibility rules are enforced at the token level, allowing assets to move between wallets, platforms, and custodians without losing regulatory controls.
Stablecoins and real-time fund operations
The webinar also highlighted the role of stablecoins in enabling continuous fund operations. Stablecoins allow regulated digital cash settlement to occur alongside tokenised fund interests, removing delays linked to traditional payment rails.
Morgan described stablecoins as the entry point for tokenised assets, noting that they act as the foundation upon which money market funds, private credit, hedge funds, and private equity structures can be built once the settlement layer is in place. While regulatory frameworks differ across regions, recent developments point to growing acceptance of regulated digital settlement in institutional markets.
Lessons from live fund structures
SkyBridge’s tokenised hedge fund offers a practical example of tokenisation in use. The fund operates within existing legal and reporting frameworks, while giving investors an additional way to hold and transfer their interests. From SkyBridge’s perspective, the primary benefit has been reduced settlement friction rather than a change in investment exposure.
Investor education remains part of the process. As Peter noted during the discussion, for many established investors, blockchain-based infrastructure “isn’t really their forte”. Reporting, however, “exactly mirrors” traditional structures, preserving familiarity while extending operational flexibility.
An operating model transition
The move towards an always-on fund industry is not driven by a single provider or platform. Asset managers, administrators, custodians, and infrastructure providers must work together to support tokenised fund servicing at scale.
The long-term measure of success may be that tokenisation fades into the background. As Daniel observed, the industry will have reached maturity when “we’ll not talk about tokenisation anymore,” in much the same way that custodians or central securities depositories rarely feature in day-to-day investment decisions.
For fund managers, the question is no longer whether tokenisation is viable. It is how quickly operating models can adapt to a market that no longer pauses at the end of the trading day.
Watch the webinar on-demand
This on-demand session looks at how tokenisation is being applied within regulated fund structures to address settlement delays, operational friction, and distribution constraints. Drawing on live fund examples and infrastructure experience, the discussion focuses on what has changed in practice and what fund managers and investors need to consider as markets move towards always-on operations.
Watch the webinar here.
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