Crypto lender Maple Finance has started a new pool for non U.S.-accredited investors to gain access to one-month U.S. Treasury yields.
On April 19, the blockchain based lending protocol announced a new cash management pool that invests idle on-chain capital in U.S. Treasury bills.
The pool offers investors outside the U.S. yield on one-month Treasury yields on stablecoin deposits, subject to a 0.5% management fee. Currently, the one-month yield on these government issued bonds sits at 3.7% so investors can expect to earn an annual yield of around 3.2%.
The offering is targeted at offshore companies, Web 3 treasuries and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) outside of the U.S. who want to put idle funds to work on-chain.
Crypto hedge fund Room40 Capital established a standalone Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to be the sole borrower from the cash management pool. Assets will be held in this SPV, which will be custodied and regulated by a prime-broker.
Some of the pool’s key features includes immediate interest accrual and next-day withdrawals, giving lenders easy access to withdrawing funds without a lock-up period. According to Maple, the three-step onboarding process should take no longer than 15 minutes.
“This pool lets stablecoin holders focus on their core business activities whilst we take care of the technicalities. The access to banking and deposit services for startups has narrowed so the importance of having this service on-chain cannot be overstated,” said Maple CEO Sid Powell in a statement.
Powell first disclosed the U.S. Treasury liquidity pool in a community call earlier this month, following which, the platform’s native token MPL surged 23%.
Several DeFi protocols have expanded their focus on Real World Assets (RWA) which have grown into one of the sector’s key trends. In March, MakerDAO began deliberating a proposal to deploy an additional $750 million to U.S. Treasuries. As of last month, the protocol had profited $3.8 million from its investment into short-term Treasuries, and RWA’s accounted for 58% of its revenue, according to Delphi Digital’s estimates.
