Janus Henderson's JQQQ puts a licensed Nasdaq-100 fund onchain

Janus Henderson, a London-based manager overseeing about $500 billion, has launched JQQQ, a fund that tracks the Nasdaq-100 and lives on the Stellar blockchain. Tokenization platform Centrifuge runs the on-chain infrastructure and Nasdaq licenses the index, CoinDesk reports. It follows last year's Janus Henderson Anemoy S&P 500 Fund (SPXA), the first tokenized index fund licensed by S&P Dow Jones Indices, and takes the firm's on-chain platform past $1 billion across Treasuries, structured credit and equities.

Why this one matters

The interesting part is not the index. It is who stands behind the token. JQQQ is issuer-sponsored: the asset manager creates and runs the fund, and the index owner signs off. That is a very different product from the third-party stock tokens that have spread across crypto venues this year, which may be backed by shares in custody or simply track a price, and often give holders no shareholder rights. We break down those structures in what tokenized stocks are.

The two models are now on a collision course. Companies have started pushing back against blockchain trading of their shares without their consent; 22 of them objected to the OKX-ICE venue, as we covered when Wells Fargo and Cisco joined the objectors. Issuer-backed funds such as JQQQ sidestep that fight because the people who own the brand and the index are inside the tent.

Our take

The tokenization story is moving from "put a Treasury bill on a blockchain" to products designed to be used on-chain, for example as loan collateral or inside DeFi apps. Centrifuge's Anil Sood made exactly that pitch. Nasdaq's Sean Wasserman framed it more cautiously, as demand for access to "established, transparent benchmarks". Both can be true, but the collateral use case still depends on regulators and platforms allowing it, and neither has said when ordinary investors will be able to do that. For the wider trend, see our explainer on what tokenization is.