Invest1 publisher3 min readPublished
WisdomTree routes a 25 basis point Treasury fund through MoonPay's 35 million accounts
MoonPay's first public distribution of a tokenized fund attaches its 35 million accounts to WTGXX, a money market fund charging 0.25% on assets reported at somewhere between $765 million and $1.22 billion.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- WisdomTree and MoonPay said on September 17 that they will connect WisdomTree's tokenized Treasury money market fund, WTGXX, to MoonPay's network of more than 35 million accounts and over 1,700 partnerships.
- The arrangement is the first time MoonPay has acted as a public distribution channel for a tokenized fund.
- WTGXX charges an expense ratio of 0.25%, in the middle of the 0.10% to 0.50% band that traditional money market funds charge.
- The fund began trading in its current form in November 2023, and its assets under management are reported at somewhere between roughly $765 million and $1.22 billion depending on the estimate.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- cost The 0.25% fee grosses between about $1.9 million and $3.05 million a year at current assets, and that pool has to cover recordkeeping on four chains as well as whatever MoonPay collects for distribution.
- constraint Growth through this channel cannot come from the average account holder: a billion dollars of inflow works out at about $29 from every one of MoonPay's 35 million accounts.
- precedent Crypto Briefing expects the February 2026 exemptions to give other tokenized funds a route to the same instant settlement, which is the feature a consumer app needs before it can sell a mutual fund.
- contradiction Estimates of WTGXX's size on the public record differ by $455 million, so an outsider has no baseline precise enough to show whether MoonPay's account holders buy anything.
A 0.25 percent expense ratio on the low estimate of WTGXX's assets, $765 million, grosses about $1.9 million a year; on the high estimate of $1.22 billion, about $3.1 million [15]. Out of that comes recordkeeping across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base and Avalanche [4], plus whatever MoonPay is paid for putting the fund in front of its users. Crypto Briefing's account of the deal does not include the commercial terms [20].
For the buyer, the fee sits 15 basis points above the cheapest traditional money market funds, which is $15 a year on a $10,000 balance [19]. What that buys is a fund that trades and settles instantly, at any hour [6].
The per-account version of the assets is smaller than it sounds. Spread the current assets across 35 million accounts and you get $22 to $35 each [17]. Adding a billion dollars of new money through this channel means about $29 from every account MoonPay has [18]. It will come, if it comes, from a small minority holding balances in the thousands, and the fund's history to date is in traditional broker-dealer channels [10].
WisdomTree is renting an installed base instead of building one: MoonPay's users already have accounts and payment methods on file, according to Crypto Briefing [21], and MoonPay's rails already sit inside wallets, exchanges and fintech apps used by tens of millions of people [11].
None of it works without the February 2026 exemptions. WTGXX is registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 [3], and the exemptions let it trade and settle instantly under a dealer-principal model [6]. A conventional mutual fund settles T+1 and trades only during market hours [7]. A consumer wallet app cannot sell that to a user who expects the purchase to complete on the screen in front of them, so the regulatory work came first.
Caroline D. Pham, MoonPay's institutional CEO, pointed to the rapid acceptance of blockchain and tokenization across the financial ecosystem as a driver of the deal [12]. WisdomTree's CEO, Jonathan Steinberg, put it in terms of stablecoins: the role of stablecoins in facilitating value transfer is integral to the next phase of digital finance, according to Steinberg [13].
In my view WisdomTree is placing a token where crypto cash already sits. A share priced at a stable $1.00 that clears instantly on four chains is usable as the cash leg inside the apps MoonPay is embedded in [3][4][11], and the fee income on the fund's present size is too small to pay for a retail build on its own [15]. The counter-thesis is cheaper to hold: the fund gets a distribution announcement, MoonPay's users carry on buying what they were already buying, and assets stay roughly where broker-dealers left them [10]. Either way the test is the next assets figure, and the one on the record is a range $455 million wide [16].
What to watch
- The next assets figure for WTGXX, and whether it moves off the $765 million to $1.22 billion range once MoonPay distribution is live.
- Any disclosure of what MoonPay is paid for distribution, or a cut to the 0.25% expense ratio to fund it.
- Whether another 1940 Act fund obtains February 2026-style exemptions for instant settlement and 24/7 trading.