Fence netted $20 million from Galaxy Digital to tokenize a $6 trillion asset‑backed finance market that still runs on manual, legacy rails.
Summary
- Blockchain finance startup Fence has raised $20 million in funding led by Galaxy Digital.
- Fence aims to modernize the $6 trillion U.S. asset‑backed finance market through tokenization and automated infrastructure.
- The company already manages around $1.5 billion in assets and works with institutions such as BlackRock.
Fence has secured a $20 million investment led by Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital to bring blockchain infrastructure to the roughly $6 trillion U.S. asset‑backed finance market, in one of the clearest recent bets on tokenizing legacy credit plumbing.
According to Galaxy Digital’s investment disclosure, Fence “leverages blockchain behind the scenes to automate and improve” asset‑backed lending workflows that today remain “labor‑intensive and highly manual,” positioning the firm as a back‑office rails provider rather than a consumer‑facing crypto platform.
Fence says its system can tokenize lenders’ positions in financing instruments and, in some cases, the underlying loans and invoices themselves, effectively turning traditionally illiquid receivables into programmable, tradable claims.
Galaxy’s RWA push meets credit market automation
Fence reports that it currently manages approximately $1.5 billion in assets on its platform, working with marquee institutions including BlackRock, where it helps streamline the administration of complex structured‑credit deals.
The company said in a statement that the fresh $20 million will support “growth and product development” as it looks to deepen integrations with banks, asset managers and specialty finance shops searching for operational efficiency and faster settlement in private credit.
Galaxy Digital framed the deal as part of its broader push into tokenized real‑world assets, following moves such as its planned multi‑chain tokenized money market fund, designed to sit alongside products like BlackRock’s roughly $2.2 billion BUIDL fund and Franklin Templeton’s BENJI in the emerging on‑chain yield stack.
The Fence funding also lands as tokenization narratives accelerate across private markets that total more than $270 trillion globally, with research cited by RWA tracking platform RWA.xyz projecting over $16 trillion in assets could be tokenized by 2030 if adoption continues to compound.
For crypto‑native investors, Galaxy’s role as lead backer signals that large digital asset firms continue to see value not only in tokenized funds and treasuries but also in the infrastructure that quietly turns real‑world exposures—leases, invoices, auto loans—into on‑chain primitives, a thesis echoed in a recent crypto.news story on how institutional flows are gravitating toward yield‑bearing, real‑world‑linked instruments.
In previous crypto.news coverage, stories on Middle East‑driven energy shocks and stories on risk sentiment have highlighted how macro and credit conditions are bleeding into digital asset markets, a backdrop that makes Galaxy’s bet on tokenized asset‑backed finance—quiet, regulated and yield‑focused—look less like hype and more like infrastructure for the next cycle of on‑chain credit.
