Kraken, Maple launch onchain USDC warehouse for institutional loans

Kraken and Maple announced on Thursday an onchain warehouse financing facility to fund Kraken’s over-the-counter institutional crypto lending. The facility uses a bankruptcy-remote special purpose vehicle (SPV) and USDC-denominated financing. Maple will provide senior financing while Kraken retains a position in the loans.

The structure applies tokenized credit onchain. Loans will be overcollateralized with Bitcoin and Ether and collateral and loan performance can be tracked on the blockchain. Kraken affiliates will originate, sell and service the loans and will keep a stake in each transaction rather than fully transferring credit risk.

Kraken Financial, a Wyoming-chartered Special Purpose Depository Institution, will hold the underlying collateral. Independent SPV administrator Zaria will manage administration of the vehicle. The announcement did not disclose the facility’s size or pricing terms.

Under the setup, Maple supplies senior secured exposure and Kraken provides the originated loan flow and servicing. The arrangement is intended to let Kraken expand its institutional lending business without increasing balance-sheet capital tied to those loans.

Data from RWA.xyz show distributed value in tokenized credit rose to more than $6.2 billion from roughly $1.87 billion a year earlier, and Maple holds about $1.4 billion in tokenized credit assets. Proponents of tokenized credit highlight onchain records for transparency and the availability of senior, secured exposures for institutional investors.

The launch occurs as institutional crypto lending continues to rebuild after major lender failures in 2022. Recent developments in institutional credit include a $200 million facility provided to another firm by an asset manager to expand prime brokerage lending, an analyst projection that tokenized credit could reach a multitrillion-dollar addressable market, and the wind-down of a lending protocol following a 2024 exploit.

The companies provided limited operational detail beyond the announcement. The facility adds to a series of tokenized credit initiatives that use traditional credit structures combined with onchain record-keeping for institutional lending.