TradFi's 807B Heavyweight Drops a Tokenized Bond Fund — Wall Street's Plumbing Gets a Crypto Faucet

New York Life Investment Management, one of the country's largest active asset managers, is moving a slice of its fixed-income business onto the blockchain through a partnership with tokenization platform Centrifuge. The companies announced Tuesday the launch of the NYLIM Anemoy U.S. High Yield Corporate Bond Segregated Portfolio, trading under the ticker HYB. It is NYLIM's first tokenized product and one of the earliest attempts to bring a high-yield bond fund onto public blockchain infrastructure, according to the announcement. NYLIM manages roughly $807 billion in assets.

Under the arrangement, the firm's existing high-yield strategy — including its investment process and risk management — will remain unchanged, but eligible investors will be able to buy in through tokens issued on Centrifuge's platform, with subscriptions and redemptions settled in the stablecoin USDC. Thomas Sy, NYLIM's head of multi-asset solutions, said in a statement that tokenization reflects investor demand for "transparency, efficiency and broader market participation," adding that the firm views blockchain infrastructure as a complement to its traditional platform rather than a replacement. Centrifuge co-founder Anil Sood framed the deal as part of a broader push to migrate institutional funds onto more "transparent" and "composable" digital rails, rather than a one-off product launch.

Centrifuge already provides tokenization infrastructure for other large asset managers, including Apollo Global Management and Janus Henderson. The fund is not being offered to U.S. persons or within the United States, the companies said, underscoring the regulatory caution that continues to shape how traditional asset managers experiment with tokenized products. The deal arrives as Wall Street firms increasingly explore tokenization, the process of issuing traditional financial assets as digital tokens on a blockchain, as a way to modernize back-office plumbing and potentially widen access to institutional-grade investment strategies for a new class of investors operating in decentralized finance markets.

Separately, publicly traded Ethereum treasury firm Sharplink added 10,000 $ETH for around $16 million last week, marking its first acquisition since October. The firm now holds 886,725 $ETH worth $1.38 billion, with $Ethereum changing hands around $1,562 on Tuesday. "Our capital allocation philosophy is disciplined and straightforward: Every financing decision we make is based on our long-term objective to increase ETH per share," said Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom in a statement.

In the United Kingdom, the Financial Conduct Authority has published its "landmark" rules for firms that help people buy, trade, and hold crypto, completing a regulatory roadmap years in the making. Trading platforms, intermediaries, custodians, stablecoin issuers, and staking providers will all need authorization from the regulator to operate in the country.