Baillie Gifford launches natively issued tokenized fund on Solana
Baillie Gifford, an UK asset manager, launches a natively issued tokenized fund on Ethereum and Solana.
Baillie Gifford has launched $BAGEY (Baillie Gifford Enhanced Yield Fund), a regulated, natively issued tokenized fund. The fund is an actively managed portfolio of short-dated bonds, structured as a UK OEIC, with custody provided by BNY and a daily NAV.
➡️Why this matters
One of the biggest hurdles facing institutional adoption of tokenized funds is not technology. It is legal certainty and ownership structure.
Institutional investors typically ask two questions:
1️⃣ What exactly do I own?
2️⃣ What happens if something goes wrong?
Many tokenized fund structures today introduce additional layers between investors and the underlying assets through SPVs, note issuers, or other wrappers.
This creates:
1️⃣ Additional counterparty risk arising from intermediary issuing vehicles.
2️⃣ Additional legal complexity where investors may not hold the same direct claim on fund assets that they would through a traditional fund structure.
The direction many institutions prefer is simple:
1️⃣ The fund share itself becomes the onchain asset.
2️⃣ Investors own a regulated fund interest rather than a tokenized claim issued by a separate vehicle.
BAGEY follows this model by issuing the fund directly onchain, with the token representing the fund share itself rather than a wrapper around it.
If this approach gains traction, it could help address one of the key concerns that has limited institutional buy-side adoption of tokenized funds: achieving the operational benefits of blockchain without materially changing the legal protections investors are accustomed to in traditional fund structures.
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