Maple Finance launches pool for US Treasury yields

The so-called on-chain management protocol gives non-U.S. accredited investors access to one-month U.S. Treasury yields.

Blockchain institutional capital marketplace Maple Finance has rolled out a United States Treasury pool for non-U.S. accredited investors and entities.

According to an April 19 post, Maple Finance has launched its new Cash Management Pool for institutional Web3 investors to access U.S. Treasury bills directly. The offering is not available to U.S. individuals or entities. The pool will source yield from one-month U.S. Treasury bills and reverse repurchase agreements, minus fees, to lenders, with crypto hedge fund Room40 Capital serving as the sole borrower via a special purpose vehicle (SPV). Maple developers wrote:

“Whilst there are a handful of ‘risk-free rate’ offerings on-chain, they do not provide the peace of mind necessary to attract hard earned treasury funds. Counterparty risk is either too high, assets too illiquid, too complicated with ETFs, or rates between 1-2% too low for the level of smart contract risk.”

Maple claimed that all pool assets are held in a standalone SPV “custodied by a regulated prime broker and Lenders have full recourse over all assets.” The firm also said that onboarding “takes between 10-15 minutes to complete,” and that interest accrues immediately from the time of deposit with no lock-up period.

“Lenders have a real-time view into the borrower’s portfolio of assets held with a regulated broker and interest statements can be downloaded at any time.”

Maple Finance is currently available on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains, originating around $1.9 billion in loans since inception. U.S. Treasury bills are classified as securities. As a result, derivatives containing such instruments as the underlying asset cannot be sold to U.S. investors without registration or an exemption from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Update: 4/20/2023 9:43PM UTC - Added clarification that Maple Finance is a blockchain institutional capital marketplace.