In an earlier room, I introduced the concept of “shopification of rimom”, or the idea that chain rails can reduce obstacles to entry and to radically evolve for financial advisers and wealth managers. Like Shopify has enabled anyone to launch an online retail company, Crypto allows a new generation of investment professionals to start and set up consulting companies without the inherited strata of the Tradfi infrastructure.
This democratization of advice foreshadows wider changes in the management of assets. Because when you zoom in-beyond the advisor and beyond assets-you start to see something else: a transformation of the investment strategies themselves, as well as in the machines behind them.
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Tokenization will reshape all asset classes
Beyond the advice, crypto and tokenization are about to reorganize whole asset classes by making the assets accessible on a global scale, fractionalized, composable and negotiable 24/7. Consider the Stablecoins which, in 2024, facilitated 27.6 billions of dollars in chain transfers, exceeding the combined volume of visa and mastercard. The efficiency is clear: transactions have settled instantly around the world, with much lower friction and downtime. Even traditionally starred products such as monetary market funds are in a chain. Traditional monetary market funds charge approximately 10 to 25 base points in costs, while cryptographic rails can considerably reduce these costs. A study by Boston Consulting Group estimates that the Fund tokenization could add approximately 17 annual yield points (or around 100 billion dollars per year worldwide) by eliminating operational ineffectiveness. In short, the tokenization manufactures markets that are always open and hyper-efficient, unlocking assets for a global investor base.
From the transparency of assets to the transparency of the strategy
It is now a consensual vision that tokenization also brings greater transparency of assets. Chain reserves and transactions are often verifiable in real time. However, active investment strategies and managers remain a black box. We can monitor tokenized assets on the chain, but the logic of portfolio management is always opaque when strategies reside outside chain. Although anyone who can inspect the assets of a DEFI loan contract, one cannot yet look in the flows, allowances and the economy of a hedge fund in the same way. The next border brings the same transparency and the same composibility to strategies and their managers themselves, not only to underlying assets.
Hedge funds today: large, exclusive and opaque
Healing funds are private capital basins using complex negotiation and risk management techniques to search for absolute yields. Globally, hedge funds oversee the thousands of asset billions through strategies ranging from actions and credit to macro and global models. Their investor base is almost entirely institutional investors and ultra-High-Ning (UHNW) individuals, often accessible through private banks or food funds. Direct investment generally requires being an accredited or qualified investor, with minimum commitments typical of $ 1 million or more (elite funds frequently require $ 5 to 10 million).
Many investors are exposed via fund funds, which bring together several hedge funds for diversification but add another layer of costs, often around 1 to 1.5% annual management fees, plus 10% of performance in addition to the structure of “2 and 20” costs of underlying funds. These vehicles remain opaque, revealing minimum information on assets or trades. Investors must trust managers who only provide periodic and partial information from their strategies. Access is exclusive and the information is rare.
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