Maple Finance, a lending protocol, has announced plans to launch a new liquidity pool that invests in U.S. Treasury bonds.
Sidney Powell, the CEO of Maple Finance, revealed the plan during a community call on Tuesday. The liquidity pool will enable stablecoin holders outside of the U.S. and accredited investors to invest in U.S. Treasury bonds and earn a yield.
Later this year, a community vote will take place to discuss new tokenomics and utility for Maple Finance’s native token, MPL. Ahead of the call, the token’s value rose by 23%.
In December, Maple Finance terminated its relationship with one of its largest clients, Orthogonal Trading, after discovering that the firm had “misrepresented its financial position.”
Orthogonal Trading had outstanding loans worth $31 million on the M11 credit pool. However, the firm failed to repay the loans approximately four weeks before Maple Finance realized the firm was insolvent.
In addition, Orthogonal Trading had claimed that its exposure to FTX was limited, which was not accurate.
As a result of FTX’s collapse, 80% of liquidity providers on the platform faced significant losses amounting to $36 million worth of credit defaults on M11. Nevertheless, M11 recently announced that it is operational again and raising funds for its KYC pool on Maple.
M11’s team anticipates that Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade and increased regulatory pressure will provide market-neutral trading firms with opportunities. They believe financing options have become scarce for such firms as CeFi lenders can no longer provide cheap capital, and crypto banking issues limit on-ramp options, particularly for USDC, in recent weeks.