The cryptocurrency-friendly bank Meld intends to provide individual investors with lending and borrowing against tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) in the near future, perhaps enabling them to “ape more into bitcoin.”
The bank and the decentralised finance (DeFi) platform Swarm Markets have inked a memorandum of understanding, according to a recent email release from a spokesman for the bank, which is partnered with the layer-1 blockchain of the same name.
Launched in December of last year, Swarm is a financial regulator BaFin-licensed company with a permissionless RWA trading platform. Meld is providing cross-asset margining opportunities for retail investors that are not currently available through traditional ways by leveraging Swarm’s platform to enable on-chain lending and borrowing for these assets.
“This could be really interesting as we go into the next bull run, where people can lend against their stocks to ape more into bitcoin, for example,” a spokesman for Swarm stated.
Through a licenced banking service, a sizable retail user base may be able to access tokenized RWAs thanks to the relationship with Meld. Thanks to the EU’s Market in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation, Meld recently obtained its virtual asset service provider (VASP) licence in Lithuania, which could theoretically make it simpler for it to obtain comparable licences in other EU members.
Certain segments of the cryptocurrency industry believe that tokenized RWAs, or the trading of “traditional” asset classes like equities, bonds, and even real estate on blockchains, have the potential to grow into multitrillion dollar enterprises. For early access to its platform, Meld has seen 75,000 potential consumers join up.