New York — WisdomTree’s crypto business is no longer an experiment, but core to the firm’s strategy and on the verge of becoming profitable, CEO Jonathan Steinberg said in a fireside chat at the Ondo Summit in New York on Tuesday.
“We want to continue to scale,” Steinberg said. “Last year we went from about $30 million in assets to about $750 million in assets,” adding that the firm is not currently monetizing its digital assets but is “in line to take this into a profitable business.”
The firm, $150 billion in assets under management, has invested heavily in blockchain infrastructure, launched tokenized funds and expanded into new chains like Solana . Steinberg said the effort is driven by long-term conviction. “It’s still early, but it’s not an experiment now. We have conviction. So we believe that eventually everything will chain.”
It’s not hard to see why WisdomTree has pushed ahead with digital assets. Most recently, during its earnings presentation, it said its total WisdomTree tokenized AUM grew to $770 million, up 25x from 2024.
WisdomTree has taken an aggressive, early lead among traditional asset managers in digital assets, launching a number of tokenized funds and recently expanding distribution via WisdomTree Connect, which enables these assets to move across self-managed wallets and institutional platforms.
The firm also made a strategic bet on blockchain infrastructure by acquiring Securrency, a compliance-focused tokenization company that it later sold to DTCC. Steinberg said the move was a fundamental step in enabling “compliance-aware tokens” and programmable financing that help WisdomTree build a long-term, interoperable digital asset strategy.
For Steinberg, crypto represents more than a product opportunity—it’s a new financial infrastructure. “Really, this is bigger than asset management. This is really about financial services,” he said. “Financial services — some of these banks go back a couple of centuries. So they built on legacy, on top of legacy, on top of legacy. There’s that modernization that needs to happen.”
As for WisdomTree’s ambitions? “We just want to continue to scale what we’re doing,” Steinberg said.
