US Treasury bills just got a digital upgrade. OpenEden, a platform for converting assets into digital tokens, has introduced tokenized US Treasury bills on the XRP Ledger.
These tokens, backed by short-term US government debt and collateralized by Treasury securities, are offered through a partnership with Ripple.
To ensure security and regulatory compliance, minters of these tokens must undergo Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) screening.
This launch represents the first instance of a traditional finance (TradFi) instrument being made available on a decentralized platform.
The press release highlights that the tokenized T-bills on the XRPL showcase “how institutional access to decentralized finance (DeFi)” is being advanced through the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs).
Markus Infanger, senior vice president of RippleX, stated that the tokenized T-bills exemplify how RWAs are being tokenized “to drive utility and new opportunities.”
“Institutions are increasingly looking at where to tokenize their real-world assets, and the arrival of T-bills on the XRPL powered by OpenEden reinforces the decentralized layer-1 blockchain.”
OpenEden’s initiative has garnered substantial support from Ripple, which invested $10 million in the decentralized platform’s TBILL tokens and future tokenization projects.
Ripple’s investment is part of a broader strategy to promote the tokenization of TradFi assets on the XRPL, a ledger designed “to power institutional-grade financial use cases.”
In related news, a total of $1.5 billion in tokens are set to be unlocked in August, including $609 million in Ripple’s XRP tokens.
Despite unlocking 1 billion tokens on the first day of each month since 2017, Ripple may consider re-locking much of its newly released XRP.
For instance, Ripple re-locked 800 million XRP from its June 1 unlock but sold approximately 300 million XRP, currently valued at around $182.5 million.
