Institutional DeFi player OpenTrade launches a tokenized treasury bill product for accredited investors. The company will use Perimeter Protocol, an open source platform developed by Circle, to extend USDC into the world of real world assets (RWA).
“USDC can add a lot of efficiencies to the traditional financial industry,” said Jeff Handler, co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of OpenTrade.
Handler explained that while working at Circle and seeing how USDC worked under the hood, the founding team had a light bulb moment and got to work building OpenTradet. “USDC can add a lot of value to structured finance,” he said.
The purpose of OpenTrade, Handler said Decipher, is to add an extra layer of utility for the increasing interest in digital assets. Interest, Handler says, has increased “as more people try to take advantage of yield products that don’t cause pain.”
Today’s launch showcases a 1:1 supported tokenization product. Essentially, for every tokenized t-bill an investor purchases, the company will purchase an actual treasury bill and provide an on-chain identifier for the underlying asset.
“That will contribute to the transparency this sector needs,” he said.
The product will also enable secured lending of USDC against government bonds, allowing lenders to earn returns while continuing to operate fully on-chain – using their existing wallets and custodians – the company said in a press release..
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Perimeter Protocol, spawned by Circle’s open-source research center, offers what Handler calls a “proven technology stack.” He explained that his mission has been to build the infrastructure necessary to leverage USDC around the world.
That’s very intentional, Handler said. Rather than a securities vehicle, OpenTrade has set itself up as a secured lending product, which is unregulated globally, the CCO said. This means the company does not have to worry about the jurisdictions in which it operates. But it also means it won’t be available in the US for a while.
Handler works with a network of financial institutions to manage off-chain assets and says he has been “pleasantly surprised by their willingness to work with them as clients.” And this is despite the fact that the crypto industry has been at the forefront of banking turmoil in the US and more recently in Britain.
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For Handler, who got involved in crypto in 2013 and was part of the first Bitcoin wallet on the iPhone, he sees OpenTrade offering a digital savings account for U.S. Treasuries to people outside the country as a product that is “nearly risk-free.”
The new product, according to today’s press release, is available to individual accredited investors, companies, funds, DAOs, regulated institutions and ‘third party distribution partners’.
Handler concluded that his company is leading the way with a product that will take some time to get into the legacy system: “I don’t have much confidence that we’ll see the equivalent of an OpenTrade product in traditional finance in the near future.” world will see.”