Maple Finance launches pool for US Treasury yields

Crypto lender Maple Finance has rolled out a United States Treasury pool for non-U.S. accredited investors and entities.

According to an Apr. 19 post, Maple Finance has launched a 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 purchase agreements, less 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 claims 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 says 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, with around $1.9 billion in loans originated 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.

Magazine: Crypto regulation: Does SEC Chair Gary Gensler have the final say?