Deep Dive into RWAs #2: ACRED by Apollo Global Management
A series on how Wall Street is pioneering Real World Asset tokenization. Each chapter explores a flagship RWA project: its structure, assets, investor access, and its role in bridging TradFi with DeFi
Chapter 2: Apollo’s ACRED – Unlocking Private Credit with Blockchain Rails
Introducing ACRED
In 2024, Apollo Global Management, one of the world’s largest alternative asset managers with $840 billion in assets under management (AUM)*, made headlines in real-world asset (RWA) tokenization with the launch of the Apollo Diversified Credit Securitize Fund (ACRED).
ACRED was created in partnership with Securitize, a regulated digital assets transfer agent. This is a feeder fund that issues tokenized shared to investors seeking current income and capital appreciation via Apollo’s underlying credit fund that lends to mid-sized American companies. Instead of holding traditional paper statement, investors of this fund receive their stake as a digital token recorded on blockchain rails and stored in a personal crypto wallet.
In simple terms: ACRED takes a traditionally illiquid and exclusive asset class, private credit, and makes it more accessible, portable, and programmable through tokenization.
* As of June 2025
The fund requires a minimum commitment of $50,000 and charges a 2% management fee. All investors need to be KYC’d.
The Blockchain Behind
Unlike natively onchain funds such as Franklin Templeton’s BENJI, ACRED initially issues tokens linked to off-chain ownership records managed by Securitize. When upgraded (or “wrapped”) to sACRED, the token becomes fully programmable within DeFi platforms. This means, that once wrapped it becomes usable as loan collateral, and participation in looping strategies and onchain trading becomes possible.
Unlike ETFs, ACRED is an interval fund, offering quarterly redemption of at least 5% of shares outstanding at NAV. This means liquidity is limited but tokenization allows holders to sell ACRED on secondary markets at any time, creating optionality unavailable in traditional private funds.
ACRED tokens are issued on Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche, and Aptos, with Wormhole as the official cross-chain interoperability provider.
How Investors Can Use sACRED
After receiving the ACRED token, investors can wrap the tokens to sACRED which then can be used as collateral in DeFi lending protocols such as Morpho, which has more than $7.3 billion in Total Value Locked.
This allows investors to borrow the US dollar-pegged USDC stablecoin against the deposited sACRED. With the borrowed USDC, investors can buy more ACRED, creating a loop that leverages their exposure to Apollo’s loan book.
This transforms private credit from a “buy-and-hold” asset into a productive, composable on-chain instrument.
Why Is This Important?
Private credit is one of the most sought-after, high-performing institutional asset classes but historically limited to $100M+ minimum investments.
ACRED changes that by:
Tokenizing private credit for smaller-scale accredited investors
Allowing productive use of private credit as collateral for loans
Unlocking secondary market liquidity for an illiquid asset class
This marks a milestone for RWAs in DeFi, moving beyond tokenization as a static wrapper, toward institutional assets as active building blocks in capital-efficient protocols.
Predictions: How Enterprises Could Use ACRED
Future enterprise applications may include:
Treasury Management: Allocating to tokenized private credit as part of onchain working capital.
Structured Credit: Issuing blockchain-native securities backed by ACRED
White-Labeled Lending: Financial firms offering client-facing lending products built on ACRED
As KYC/AML tooling improves and custodians integrate ACRED, one can expect greater institutional adoption and secondary liquidity.
Coming Up Next
In Chapter 3, we’ll break down BlackRock’s BUIDL token and how the world’s largest asset manager is advancing tokenized treasuries and collateral use cases, and what that means for enterprises exploring RWAs.