Finblox offers tokenized treasury yield with OpenEden for crypto investing.

The crypto investment platform Finblox has become one of the companies that allows investors to earn a yield from tokenized U.S. Treasury bills (T-bills) on their stablecoin holdings. Finblox aims to become a “crypto superapp” by providing a wide range of financial services. The company announced on Tuesday that investors on its platform can now invest Circle’s USDC stablecoin in OpenEden’s yield-generating TBILL token rights, which are backed by short-term U.S. government bonds.

Tokenized T-bills have become a $500 million asset class at the intersection of digital assets and traditional finance products. They work like a blockchain-based version of a high-yield savings account, where investors can park their excess stablecoins in short-term U.S. government bonds and earn a return.

As central banks raised interest rates to combat inflation, rising T-bill yields have attracted digital investors who were disappointed with lending-based yield offerings after last year’s dramatic blowups of Terra, Celsius and BlockFi. Investment banking giant Franklin Templeton and DeFi platforms such as Ondo Finance, Maple Finance and OpenEden stepped up to meet the demand.

So far, however, tokenized products have mainly been available to professional investors. Finblox plans to offer a way for retail users to invest as well. The firm acts as an intermediary and invests in OpenEden’s TBILL tokens, which are only accessible to accredited investors and institutions due to regulations. Finblox will pass on the yield to users through its own “T-Bill Token,” and take a cut of as much as 1 percentage point from OpenEden’s estimated annual yield, currently at around 5.2%.

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The platform opened access first for professional investors to gather feedback and will soon expand to users who have completed know-your-customer (KYC) checks and provided proof of address for compliance reasons. Qin En, principal at Saison Capital, a venture capital firm that invested in both Finblox and OpenEden, said, “This collaboration unlocks unprecedented access to a trillion-dollar market, offering users transparency and trust. Beyond portfolio diversification, it offers the potential for more reliable and safer yields.”

Edited by Sheldon Reback.