Headline management fees on tokenised money-market and treasury products have fallen sharply since the first institutional launches, tracking the same competitive path exchange-traded funds followed.
The compression is faster because distribution is cheaper: onboarding happens through a whitelist rather than a broker network, and there is no exchange listing fee to amortise.
Issuers are compensating by charging for services around the product, including reporting, collateral mobility and integration support.
The risk is familiar. When fees approach zero, scale decides survival, and smaller issuers will need a distribution partner or a differentiated wrapper.
For buyers the practical question is not fee level but operational depth: who administers the fund, how redemptions behave under stress and whether the token can move between venues.
