RWA Issuer Midas Expands Tokenized Products to Retail Users with Regulatory Nod in Europe

Real-world asset platform Midas announced Tuesday an expansion in access to its tokenized U.S. Treasury bills and yield-bearing carry trade products to retail users after acquiring a regulatory green light in Liechtenstein.

This means that Midas removed the $100,000 minimum investment requirement and investor accreditation process for its mTBILL and mBASIS tokens, and has also steamlined the process for investing in the tokens to make them available with as little as "one-click." The tokens are accessible globally excluding the U.S. and sanctioned countries, the company said.

The issuance of the products received regulatory approval from Liechtenstein's Financial Market Authority, and will be passported across Germany and Europe, co-founder Dennis Dinkelmeyer said in an email interview with CoinDesk. Passporting allows financial institutions to access all countries in the European Economic Area by acquiring regulatory approval in one of the member states.

"We will be the only RWA issuer with a regulatory compliant offering that has no minimum thresholds and investor accreditation process and full DeFi composability of a permissionless token," Dinkelmeyer told CoinDesk.

Tokenized versions of real-world assets such as U.S. government bonds are increasingly in vogue among crypto investors to park their stablecoins and earn steady yield without leaving blockchains rails. The tokenized T-bill market tripled in a year to $2.3 billion with new entrants like asset management giant BlackRock entering the competition, rwa.xyz data shows. Midas's mTBILL is backed by BlackRock's short-term Treasury bill exchange-traded fund (ETF), and gathered nearly $5 million of deposits.

Along with the success of T-bill tokens, new types of yield-bearing tokenized products emerged such as Ethena's USDe "synthetic dollar," which generates yield from market neutral trading positions also known as the "basis" trade. Midas launched its own version with mBASIS earlier this year, and has over $4 million of assets under management.