TrustToken Turns to New Brand, Leadership, With Narrowed Focus on Institutional Adoption

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  • Trust­To­ken opts for a rebrand in the midst of what many are call­ing an indus­try turn­ing point 
  • True­Fi, a decen­tral­ized pro­to­col that facil­i­tates uncol­lat­er­al­ized lend­ing, launched by Trust­To­ken in 2020, is going DAO

Trust­To­ken, the core team behind pop­u­lar sta­ble­coin TUSD and uncol­lat­er­al­ized lend­ing pro­to­col True­Fi is lean­ing into the insti­tu­tion­al nar­ra­tive with its new rebrand­ing, in a tumul­tuous year for sta­ble­coins and cryp­to as it angles to attract more big lenders and asset man­agers to the space.

Once act­ing as the core team behind the True­Fi pro­to­col, which has orig­i­nat­ed near­ly $2 bil­lion in uncol­lat­er­al­ized loans to cryp­to bor­row­ers like Alame­da as well as mak­ing inroads into real-world lend­ing, Arch­block is now hand­ing off the future of the pro­to­col to a decen­tral­ized autonomous orga­ni­za­tion (DAO) and Foun­da­tion. This includes pass­ing off the True­Fi trea­sury, smart con­tracts, intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, and respon­si­bil­i­ties for design­ing and exe­cut­ing on the protocol’s roadmap.

“We’ve issued near­ly $2 bil­lion in loans, paid out tens of mil­lions of dol­lars worth of inter­est, and main­tained zero defaults,” said Ryan Roden­baugh, TrueFi’s busi­ness devel­op­ment lead

“Though we start­ed by lend­ing to cryp­to trad­ing firms, we are cur­rent­ly laser focused on con­nect­ing DeFi with ‘real-world’ lend­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties across a num­ber of sec­tors to give these busi­ness­es access to the effi­cien­cy of DeFi,” he said. 

Insti­tu­tions are like­ly more weary of cryp­to lend­ing plat­forms after the fall of now bank­rupt cryp­to lender and trad­ing plat­form Cel­sius, but the Arch­block team is con­fi­dent that a decen­tral­ized approach focused on trans­paren­cy and “hands-on sup­port from the Arch­block team” will bring tra­di­tion­al play­ers into the space. 

With the DAO now over­see­ing much of TrueFi’s oper­a­tions, Arch­block will con­tin­ue to “make major con­tri­bu­tions to the tech­nol­o­gy and growth efforts,” the com­pa­ny said. The goal is to grow TrueFi’s total val­ue out­stand­ing, a spokesper­son added. 

As Trust­To­ken, the com­pa­ny, launched its largest sta­ble­coin, TrueUSD (TUSD), in 2018. With a cur­rent mar­ket cap of about $1.1 bil­lion, TUSD is the sixth-largest sta­ble­coin, behind FRAX, accord­ing to CoinGecko. The token is ful­ly redeemable, “one-to-one for US dol­lars, as inde­pen­dent­ly attest­ed every 30 sec­onds” by busi­ness man­age­ment firm Armani­no, said Ryan Chris­tensen, Archblock’s for­mer chief prod­uct offi­cer and its new CEO.

In the after­math of TerraUSD’s col­lapse, trans­paren­cy and secu­ri­ty of reserves is even more impor­tant for investors and reg­u­la­tors, who have vowed to take a clos­er look at the indus­try. A spokesper­son for the com­pa­ny declined to com­ment on Wednesday’s reports that a new sta­ble­coin bill is in the works in Con­gress, but Arch­block is com­ply­ing with cur­rent reg­u­la­tions, Chris­tensen said. 

“We con­sid­er sta­ble­coins a key build­ing block to world­wide DeFi adop­tion, most exem­pli­fied by dol­lar-denom­i­nat­ed glob­al lend­ing, and are proud to be involved at both the asset and infra­struc­ture lay­ers,” Chris­tensen added. 

Arch­block isn’t the only cryp­to com­pa­ny look­ing to refresh its image in the cur­rent mar­ket envi­ron­ment. Enter­prise tech­nol­o­gy infra­struc­ture provider Sym­biont unveiled its plans to revamp its brand ear­li­er this month. The com­pa­ny is hop­ing to draw more inter­est from Wall Street with its plans. 

Now is the time “to bet­ter edu­cate the indus­try on the entire dig­i­tal asset/blockchain ecosys­tem on the heels of a cryp­to win­ter,” Mark Smith, CEO and co-founder of Sym­biont, said.


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  • Casey Wag­n­er

    Block­works

    Senior Reporter

    Casey Wag­n­er is a New York-based busi­ness jour­nal­ist cov­er­ing reg­u­la­tion, leg­is­la­tion, dig­i­tal asset invest­ment firms, mar­ket struc­ture, cen­tral banks and gov­ern­ments, and CBD­Cs. Pri­or to join­ing Block­works, she report­ed on mar­kets at Bloomberg News. She grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia with a degree in Media Studies.

    Con­tact Casey via email at [email pro­tect­ed]

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