Nasdaq-100 comes onchain as Janus Henderson and Centrifuge launch first licensed fund
Janus Henderson, a London-based asset manager overseeing roughly $500 billion, is bringing one of Wall Streets best-known stock indexes onto blockchain rails through an issuer-sponsored fund. The launch comes amid an escalating debate over who gets to tokenize traditional securities. The firm teamed up with tokenization platform Centrifuge to launch JQQQ, a fund tracking the Nasdaq-100 Index, home to tech giants including Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft. The fund is issued on the Stellar XLM$0.1853 blockchain, the companies said Tuesday. JQQQ follows the introduction of a similar onchain index fund product last year, the Janus Henderson Anemoy St necessarily own the underlying shares or receive shareholder rights. The distinction has become central in the debate around tokenization efforts. Most recently, 22 companies objected to plans for blockchain-based trading of their shares on the OKX-ICE venue, adding to a debate over whether issuers should have a say when their stocks are tokenized. “As investors explore new ways to access markets through digital infrastructure, demand continues to grow for exposure to established, transparent benchmarks,” said Sean Wasserman, head of index product management at Nasdaq. The fund also shows how tokenization is moving beyond digital versions of existing investments toward products built to operate on blockchains from the start. Such