Regulated Tokenized U.S. Treasurys Are Coming On-Chain, But Not Available in The U.S.

Digital asset liquidity provider Enigma Securities has partnered with Circle-backed tech company OpenTrade to bring US Treasury bill-backed yield products on-chain.

This product will be available to Enigma’s institutional clients through their existing OTC (over-the-counter) trading desk set-up. According to Jeff Handler, the chief commercial officer and co-founder of OpenTrade, the estimated annualized yield for these real-world asset (RWA) backed products will be between 4.5% to 5%.

“This allows Enigma’s clients to unlock this stable, predictable yield on otherwise idle USDC balances without any additional onboarding requirements, and using the exact same methods they use to transact with Enigma today,” Handler said. According to Handler, transactions for these products will be conducted as fixed-term, fixed-rate (based on the term and rate of the T-bills) secure loans in USDC, to the Open Trade Special Purpose Company facilitated entirely by Enigma.

“The OpenTrade SPV has been established for the sole purpose of processing these secured loans, which will include buying, custodying and selling the underlying assets backing the loans to financial institution counterparties.”

“The structure is entirely bankruptcy remote, and Enigma clients are always fully secured by the assets backing these secured loans,” Handler said. Handler believes that it is important to have regulated offerings of crypto assets for clients, as it offers customers legal protection. These latest RWA-backed products will be available to Enigma’s client base across Europe, Latin America and Asia. US investors will not be able to purchase these offerings.

According to Handler, Latin American clients have shown particularly high interest in yield products backed by RWAs. He believes this is likely a function of the demand for USD-denominated financial assets that can provide stable and predictable returns, noting that local currencies in Latin American countries have historically been subject to high amounts of volatility, limiting their ability to save and accumulate wealth.