Maple Finance, an institutional capital marketplace focused on crypto, has issued its first syndicated loan in excess of USD 100m to Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm and parent company of crypto derivatives exchange FTX.
According to an announcement from Maple Finance, the loan to Alameda was made possible after the crypto lending and borrowing firm Abra deposited USD 25m into Alameda’s pool on the platform.
Abra was joined by several other lenders, including CoinShares, ZedRun, and others, bringing the total deposits to more than USD 100m.
Alameda Research plans to use the loan, which will be issued in the stablecoin USD coin (USDC), to facilitate its market-making business, the announcement added.
“Against a backdrop of market uncertainty, Maple is seeing increasing institutional demand for uncollateralized lending opportunities,” Sidney Powell, CEO and co-founder of Maple Finance told Cryptonews.com in an emailed comment.
Powell added that many institutional investors, corporate treasuries, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are looking for stable yields, and that, therefore, the decentralized finance (DeFi) lending market will grow “significantly” in 2022.
Currently run by the two co-CEOs Caroline Ellison and Sam Trabucco, Alameda Research employs both arbitrage and quantitative trading strategies across the cryptoasset market, in addition to acting as a market maker on several exchanges, according to its website.
According to Maple Finance, Alameda’s pool, which launched in November last year, marks the first syndicated loan in DeFi, where several lenders get together to provide funds for a single borrower.
Launched 9 months ago and focused on offering uncollateralized loans to institutional customers, Maple Finance has reached a total value locked (TVL) of USD 644.18m. The target for the Alameda pool on the platform is USD 1bn in loans originated this year, with Maple Finance seeking to hit an overall TVL of USD 5bn by the end of the year, the firm said.
“In an otherwise bearish market, firms are deploying liquidity where yields are stable and sustainable,” Maple Finance said in its announcement. It added that the growing institutional participation on its platform “demonstrates the attractiveness of DeFi lending opportunities.”
The announcement from Maple Finance follows a report last week from crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX where it predicted that the demand for high-yield crypto savings products will surge this year, given a lack of yield elsewhere.
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