On Thursday, the financial giant Bank of New York Mellon Corp announced its latest crypto offering: a tool that provides up-to-date data about a fund’s net asset value, or NAV, directly on a blockchain. This reflects the growing sophistication of a new class of tokenized funds operated by firms like BlackRock, which will be the first to use the new BNY tool.
The launch represents a fresh foray by BNY into the volatile blockchain sector, which has been buoyed by a favorable U.S. regulatory landscape as President Trump pushes a pro-crypto agenda at every level of government. In March, BNY head of digital assets Caroline Butler testified before the House Financial Services Committee at a hearing on stablecoins.
“Embracing blockchain technology in connecting the traditional and digital markets is consistent with BNY’s long track record of supporting innovation in the global financial system,” she said at the hearing.
In an interview with Fortune, Butler said the new product will allow more up-to-date transparency around tokenized funds—a fast-growing new category of funds, which resemble traditional funds but where the underlying assets are recorded and transferred on the blockchain. BNY’s new product can, in turn, improve the credit rating of the funds.
“Because we have expertise in blockchain, other fund accountants in the industry would struggle to do this,” she told Fortune. “It sits right in that sweet spot as we continue to add more and more value for clients.”
On-chain data
While the crypto sector began in 2008 with the introduction of Bitcoin, traditional financial institutions like BNY have been hesitant to enter the space, largely because of regulatory uncertainty. Still, BNY has shown an interest in the technology, including launching a digital asset custody platform that allowed clients to hold Bitcoin and Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency, with the bank.
The plan, however, clashed with the Securities and Exchange Commission during the Biden Administration, which issued guidance surrounding balance sheet requirements for companies holding crypto assets for clients.
After putting its custody product on hold and continuing to build out its tokenization capabilities, BNY received an exemption in 2024 that allowed it to custody Bitcoin and Ethereum held for exchange-traded products without it being treated as a balance-sheet liability, and soon after received approval to hold crypto assets for other purposes. Under Trump, the SEC quickly rescinded the previous guidance, known as SAB 121, which was broadly unpopular among banks and crypto firms.
BNY’s latest crypto product moves beyond custody, and reflects the growth of financial instruments launched on blockchains, such as BlackRock’s on-chain money market fund, BUIDL. Larry Fink, BlackRock’s CEO, has publicly argued that more and more financial assets will be tokenized to improve cost and efficiencies, though the technology has still been limited to specific pilots and a largely blockchain-native customer base.
Put in simple terms, the new tool will allow BNY to post the net asset value, or NAV, for tokenized funds directly onto the blockchain, rather than having to rely on the accounting of third-party services to furnish this information. Butler said that the product will help investors see the up-to-date NAV of financial instruments such as BUIDL, which in turn will drive more creditworthiness.
While Butler acknowledged that this type of data sharing is not unique to crypto, she said that BNY’s blockchain enables the company to offer a fuller suite of tools around tokenized funds. “It’s just a use case to demonstrate how you can actually now start to make information more available to everybody that needs it,” she told Fortune.
BlackRock, which relies on BNY as the fund administrator and custodian for BUIDL, will be the first client to use the tool. “BNY’s enablement of off-chain data insights to public blockchains is an unprecedented event and a significant milestone for the industry,” said Robert Mitchnick, BlackRock’s head of digital assets, in a statement shared with Fortune.
As BNY continues to push into the digital asset space, Butler said that it will expand the data product to other companies offering the tokenized fund based on client demand, though she declined to share whether BNY is working on additional blockchain tools. “We have the opportunity to operate at all parts of that fund life cycle and the assets life cycle,” she said.
