Bitwise Asset Management has just made its first move into tokenized funds, and it comes with $259 million already behind it.
The firm announces it is taking over investment management of the Bitwise Crypto Carry Fund, ticker USCC, a tokenized fund built around a market-neutral basis-trade strategy that currently delivers a 4% annual yield. The full details land via Bitwise’s official announcement, and the product is available to qualified purchasers starting now.
The fund was originally created by Superstate in 2024, and Superstate is not walking away. The company continues to run the on-chain infrastructure through its FundOS platform while Bitwise steps in as investment manager, a handoff that keeps the technical backbone intact while bringing one of crypto’s most established asset managers into the driver’s seat.
The strategy at the heart of USCC is a crypto basis trade, and it is worth understanding clearly. The fund holds spot positions in major crypto assets, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP, and simultaneously sells futures contracts tied to those same assets. The yield comes from the spread between the spot price and the futures price, a gap that tends to persist in crypto markets because of the structural demand for leveraged long exposure among traders.
The result is a market-neutral position. The fund is not making a directional bet on whether BTC or ETH goes up or down. It is capturing the difference between where those assets trade in the spot market and where their futures trade, and converting that difference into yield for investors. At the current rate, that yield sits at 4% annually, not explosive, but consistent and detached from the directional volatility that makes most crypto investments difficult to hold through market cycles.
The basis trade is not a new idea in traditional finance, but applying it systematically across multiple crypto assets inside a tokenized fund structure is still relatively novel. USCC packages that strategy into a format that qualified purchasers can access without having to run the trade themselves, manage the positions, or deal with the complexity of holding both spot and futures exposure simultaneously.
Most tokenized funds stop at the token itself. USCC goes further. Tokens representing positions in the fund are accepted as collateral across major DeFi lending markets, specifically Aave, Kamino, and Morpho. That means investors holding USCC tokens are not just sitting on a yield-generating position, they can take that position to a lending protocol and borrow stablecoins against it.
That changes the capital efficiency picture entirely. An investor can hold USCC, earn the 4% basis yield, and simultaneously use those tokens as collateral to access liquidity without selling. It is a structure that lets the same capital do two things at once, something that is essentially impossible in traditional fund investing but becomes natural when the fund exists on-chain.
The fact that Aave, Kamino, and Morpho already accept USCC tokens as collateral at launch is not a small detail. Getting three of DeFi’s most significant lending markets to integrate a fund token before it even changes managers signals that the on-chain finance community takes the product seriously. That kind of integration does not happen automatically, it reflects both the quality of Superstate’s infrastructure and the credibility that Bitwise brings to the table.
This is Bitwise’s first tokenized fund, and the timing reflects where the firm sees the market heading. Bitwise has spent years building a track record in crypto asset management, ETFs, index funds, research, and the move into tokenized products is a logical extension of that work into on-chain rails. USCC is not a pivot for Bitwise. It is an expansion into a format that the firm clearly believes is becoming a permanent part of how institutions access crypto.
The partnership structure is also worth noting. Bitwise takes on investment management responsibility while Superstate retains the infrastructure role. It is a division of labor that plays to each party’s strengths, Superstate built FundOS specifically to power on-chain fund operations, and Bitwise brings the asset management credibility and distribution that a $259 million fund needs to grow. Neither company is trying to do the other’s job, and that clarity tends to produce better outcomes than arrangements where roles overlap.
For qualified purchasers interested in accessing the fund, Bitwise directs inquiries to bitwiseinvestments.com or directly through their official channels.
The broader context around USCC is worth sitting with for a moment. Crypto markets in 2025 and into 2026 have shown that directional exposure remains deeply volatile, assets that post massive gains in one quarter can give significant portions of those gains back in the next. For institutional investors and qualified purchasers who want exposure to the crypto ecosystem without riding that volatility curve, a market-neutral yield product fills a gap that has been hard to address cleanly.
USCC is not the only product in this space, but the combination of a $259 million fund size, DeFi collateral acceptance across three major protocols, Superstate’s proven on-chain infrastructure, and Bitwise’s asset management track record makes it one of the more complete offerings available at this level.
The 4% annual yield is the headline number, but the structure around it, the neutrality, the composability, the institutional-grade management, is what makes the product worth paying attention to beyond the yield figure alone. For anyone watching where tokenized finance is heading, USCC is a clear data point in that direction.
Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services.
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The post Bitwise Launches Its First Tokenized Fund With $259M in Assets and 4% Annual Yield appeared first on The Merkle News.


