Tokenized funds will overtake traditional fund structures within five years, according to Kevin de Patoul, CEO of Brussels-based digital market maker Keyrock. On-chain investment vehicles are cheaper, more transparent and ultimately inevitable, he said.
Speaking at the Real World Asset Summit 2025 in Brooklyn, De Patoul explained that tokenized funds solve many inefficiencies of conventional asset management. “From the perspective of the fund manager, it’s more efficient and less costly. From the investor perspective, you get transparency and liquidity. The token itself can be used as collateral or traded,” he told Investment Officer.
Tokenization allows investors to hold blockchain-based claims on their fund interests, creating the possibility of secondary trading and easier rebalancing. De Patoul compared the shift to the transition from paper-based securities to exchange-traded funds, adding that the logic of programmability makes the product superior regardless of the underlying strategy.
De Patoul’s comments came as other heavyweights at the summit, including innovation executives from Franklin Templeton, BlackRock, Fidelity and Janus Henderson, struck a similarly bullish tone.
Last week Bloomberg reported that BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is preparing a 2 trillion dollar push into real-world assets through tokenised ETFs, according to people familiar with the strategy. The firm has already tested the waters with its BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), a vehicle backed by short-term US Treasuries, repos and cash that has grown into the world’s largest tokenised Treasury product with nearly 2.2 billions dollars in assets.
Franklin Templeton has rolled out tokenized share classes of money-market funds, while in his 2025 letter to investors Blackrock chief executive Larry Fink said tokenisation could “transform financial markets.”
US takes the lead
Yet most traditional finance giants have been slow to follow, especially in Europe. De Patoul pointed to three main hurdles: the lack of regulatory clarity, institutional risk aversion, and incomplete infrastructure. “The first step is knowing the rules of the game so institutions can participate safely,” he said.
The contrast between the US and Europe, he argued, is largely political. “In January, Donald Trump declared the US would be the crypto capital of the world. Whatever his motives, that gave the industry a clear direction.” Within months, the U.S. Genius Act on digital currencies was drafted and passed into law, requiring stablecoins to be fully backed by reserves and subject to regular transparency reports.
“Compare that to Europe, where MiCA took years to develop and still has big gaps. The difference in mindset is dramatic,” De Patoul said. “In the US, fund managers can realistically say, ‘This technology can cut my costs by 40 percent, and I know regulation won’t put my business at risk.’ In Europe, leaders like Christine Lagarde still dismiss crypto as ‘ridiculous.’”
For De Patoul, the problem is how the story is told. “When European institutions hear ‘crypto,’ they still think of Bitcoin volatility or overpriced NFTs. That noise grabs attention, but it distracts from the underlying benefits of the technology.”
Tokenized active strategies
While much of the attention has been on tokenizing traditional assets, De Patoul highlighted what he sees as the most revolutionary development: the surge of actively managed strategies fully on-chain.
“The growth of actively managed strategies fully on-chain has been extraordinary, over 800 per cent in the past year. More than half the wallets involved are larger investors, and over 95 per cent of the value deployed is already institutional. That shows this isn’t just retail experimentation, it’s a structural shift.”
Keyrock is also acting on that conviction. The Brussels-based firm last week acquired Turing Capital, a Luxembourg alternative investment fund manager which supports crypto startups as a business angel. The deal aims to spearhead its push into asset and wealth management. The new division will be led by Turing co-founder Jorge Schnura, who joins Keyrock’s executive committee as president of the unit.
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