AI & ML

Apex Fund Services Brings Bitcoin Mining Investment to Blockchain With Coinbase Base Tokenization

Mar 24, 2026 5 min read views

Apex Group, the fund services behemoth administering more than $3.5 trillion in assets, has broadened its tokenization portfolio with a structured product designed to give institutional clients direct economic exposure to bitcoin mining — to be issued and managed on Base, Coinbase's Ethereum layer-2 platform operating on the U.S. exchange's infrastructure.

Since acquiring real-world asset (RWA) specialist Tokeny last May, Apex has pursued an aggressive expansion into the tokenization sector. The firm announced on Tuesday that it will tokenize the Omnes Mining Note — ticker OMN — an institutional-grade structured note backed by bitcoin hashrate, the computational metric at the heart of the network's block-production engine.

The OMN is engineered to offer professional non-U.S. investors direct economic participation in new bitcoin production, measured in hashrate — the raw computational throughput that validates transactions and mints the leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Crucially, the instrument is structured to eliminate the operational burden typically associated with mining exposure: participants need not contend with hardware procurement, energy management, infrastructure overhead, or the complex compliance landscape surrounding mining operations, according to a company release.

Each OMN token is collateralized by a fixed allocation of 1 petahash per second (1 PH/s) of Bitcoin hashrate across the instrument's 36-month tenor. Ownership records are maintained in book-entry form and mirrored on-chain under the ERC-3643 token standard, as detailed on the Omnes website. Developed by Tokeny, ERC-3643 is an Ethereum-native protocol purpose-built for the compliant tokenization of real-world assets, incorporating built-in identity verification and transfer restriction mechanisms.

"Tokenization gives investors mobility and utility that traditional notes cannot," said Peter Hughes, founder and CEO of Apex Group, in the statement. "Qualified investors can transfer OMN onchain and, over time, potentially use it as a form of collateral in permissioned lending without selling the asset. This enhances liquidity while giving Omnes a more scalable and globally distributable structure."

The announcement builds on momentum established just days prior. Apex disclosed last week that its role as transfer agent and net asset value record keeper for the Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund would be extended to the Base network, deepening the firm's integration with Coinbase's on-chain ecosystem.

"Bringing a regulated debt product backed by mining onto Base is a huge win. It proves that onchain finance isn't just for crypto-native assets — it's for real-world industrial infrastructure too," said Jesse Pollak, head of Base.

"Bitcoin mining is the only mechanism that creates new Bitcoin through protocol issuance. This is economically distinct from yield strategies that rely on redistributing existing Bitcoin," said Emmanuel Montero, Omnes' CEO.

BlackRock is betting billions that tokenized funds will do for Wall Street what the internet did to mail

In his annual letter, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink argues that digital wallets and tokenized assets could modernize markets and expand investor access.

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