Exclusive: Midas raises $8.75M for real-world asset tokenization
Illustration: Gabriella Turrisi/Axios
Midas, which is bringing real-world assets onto the blockchain, raised $8.75 million in funding, the company tells Axios exclusively.
Why it matters: The company has created a protocol that tokenizes real-world assets, with an initial product that brings U.S. Treasuries on-chain.
- That product, called mTBILL, is a permission-less ERC-20 token tracking short-dated T-bills.
Zoom in: The company's $8.75 million seed round was led by Framework Ventures, BlockTower and HV Capital.
- It also includes backing from Cathay Ledger, 6th Man Ventures, Hack VC, GSR, Lattice Capital, Phaedrus, Theia Blockchain, Pareto, Axelar Foundation, Peer VC, FJ Labs and Coinbase Ventures.
Zoom out: Midas was founded by Fabrice Grinda, founder and executive chairman of blank check firm Global Technology Acquisition Corp. (GTAC), and Dennis Dinkelmeyer, who is vice president of GTAC.
- The two also built a Nasdaq-listed fund that purchased $200 million in T-bills, Midas CEO Dinkelmeyer says.
- "We got intimately familiar with buying T-bills at scale in a highly institutional grade solution and also got familiar with the applicable regulations."
Between the lines: Midas is positioning its mTBILL token as an alternative to stablecoins that can earn what is now a 5% yield.
- "The idea that your stablecoins, especially USDC and USDT, don't earn yield in a non-zero rate environment makes no sense," Midas executive chairman Grinda says.
It will also enable investors to participate in DeFi applications on platforms like MakerDAO, Uniswap, Aave and others.
- According to Dinkelmeyer, "the token itself is identical to USDC or USDT in function."
State of play: Midas is a German, BaFin-regulated entity and MiCA compliant, which the founders say allows it to serve the entire world, outside of the U.S. and sanctioned countries.
- The company has a U.S. entry strategy, but it is reliant on an SEC registration process that Dinkelmeyer says "oftentimes includes multiyear review periods that may not actually lead to success."
- But he adds, "We're quite interested in working with the SEC and other regulators to provide such a yield-bearing instrument, and we are attempting to develop such solutions in a regulatory compliant way."
