Centrifugation
He will also serve as Chief Investment Officer of Anemoy, Centrifuge’s affiliated on-chain asset management company.
This appointment is because tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) is attracting new attention from the traditional financial world. Global banks, asset managers are increasingly exploring using blockchain rails to move and record ownership of assets such as bonds, funds and stocks. They pursue operational efficiency, wider distribution, 24 hours, programmable transactions.
It is a potentially huge opportunity. The tokenized RWA market, which is currently at $25 billion and more than doubled in a year, is projected to grow to trillions of dollars over the next decade, according to reports by McKinsey, 21Shares, Ripple and BCG.
Centrifuge has built a regulated structure for these products, establishing it as a bridge between blockchain rails and financial institutions seeking exposure to digital versions of familiar investment products. The platform is worth more than $760 million, according to Defillama data, including the $400 million tokenized US Treasury Fund issued by Anemoy. The protocol recently extended its products to Avalanche (Avax) and Solana (SOL), created an on-chain version of the S&P 500 index, and launched a tokenized credit loan obligation fund with asset manager Janus Henderson.
Before participating in centrifugation, Blumberg spent more than 20 years in the traditional capital markets of Goldman Sachs, Investco and BlackRock, developing the development of the ETF market into a large part of global asset management. In an interview with Coindesk, he elicited the similarities between tokenization and ETFs in the early days, and how it disrupted the mutual fund market.
“There’s a huge part in the world that wasn’t traditional fiscal focus, for example, in the global South, or all countries that have problems with currencies that aren’t that easy in high inflation or other jurisdictions,” Blumberg explained. “All of a sudden they have a whole new ecosystem in the world of defi (decentralized finance), which allows them all to offer products of the same quality as others.”
“Tokenized real-world assets are truly democratizing the financial ecosystem,” he added.
Blumberg will help traditional financial companies implement it in chains, while simultaneously improving operations and improving tokenized products for use in facilities.
“Tradfi has great distribution opportunities,” he said. “From a technology perspective, if it’s too late, you might miss the train.”
Read more: Credit Agricol’s Asset Services Unit Tokenizes SME Exchanges in Europe