Integration brings natively issued, Treasury-secured sovereign collateral to Membrane’s institutional financing platform, which has supported more than $13 billion in transactions
NEW YORK — Nov 10 — Membrane Labs and M1X Global today announced the integration of USDM1, a USD-denominated sovereign bond issued natively onchain and secured on a 1:1 basis by short-duration US Treasury instruments, into Membrane’s institutional credit and lending infrastructure. Membrane’s platform has supported more than $13 billion in institutional loans and transactions, and the addition of USDM1 expands the assets available for collateralized financing beyond stablecoins and tokenized fund interests.
The integration enables eligible institutional trading desks, borrowers, lenders and custodians to access USDM1 through Membrane’s infrastructure for bilateral lending, repo and collateral management. Membrane’s platform supports counterparty discovery, financing negotiation and collateral workflows, creating infrastructure for institutions to finance, mobilize and reuse sovereign collateral across digital asset credit markets.
As institutional trading and financing activity moves onchain, collateral characteristics are becoming increasingly important to capital efficiency. For banks, dealers and institutional counterparties, collateral eligibility, enforceable netting, financing treatment and reuse can materially impact balance-sheet requirements and the amount of trading and credit activity supported by a given pool of assets.
Unlike corporate-issued payment instruments or tokenized fund interests, USDM1 directly represents a USD-denominated sovereign bond issued under New York law and secured on a 1:1 basis by short-duration US Treasury instruments held in a bankruptcy-remote structure. The instrument combines enforceable collateral rights with programmable blockchain infrastructure and 24/7, T+0 settlement. It pays a sovereign coupon, is structured to support sovereign look-through to underlying US Treasury collateral for applicable credit risk mitigation and liquidity treatment, and may be used under established institutional frameworks including ISDA, GMRA and GMSLA agreements.
Through Membrane, institutional counterparties can incorporate USDM1 into secured lending, repo, collateral substitution and financing workflows, including sub-hour and intraday financing structures for precision liquidity management.
“Integrating USDM1 gives institutional counterparties access to a new form of sovereign collateral across Membrane’s prime services ecosystem,” said Carson Cook, Founder and CEO of Membrane Labs. “By combining digitally native sovereign debt with established institutional credit structures, documentation and risk-management practices, we’re expanding the types of collateral that can be financed and mobilized through our infrastructure.”
“In institutional financing, high-quality sovereign collateral is fundamental as margin, as a liquidity management tool and as working balance-sheet inventory,” said Mark Lurie, co-founder and CEO of M1X Global. “Membrane connects lending, repo and collateral workflows across the institutional stack. Integrating USDM1 enables counterparties to finance, deploy and reuse digitally native sovereign collateral inside infrastructure institutional credit markets rely on.”
The integration connects natively issued sovereign debt with the credit, risk management and collateral infrastructure needed to support repeatable institutional financing activity. It also builds on USDM1’s growing use in institutional financing markets. USDM1 previously served as the sovereign securities leg in the first fully onchain repo transaction involving Virtu Financial and Tradeweb on the Canton network, and was subsequently used in the first institutional repo on Stellar, which demonstrated continuous financing through 72 automated hourly repo rolls, including overnight and weekend activity.
USDM1 is also supported by institutional custody providers including Anchorage Digital Bank, BitGo Bank & Trust, N.A., and tZERO’s regulated broker-dealer custody infrastructure, and has been adopted for institutional collateral workflows by trading counterparties including STS Digital and Nonco. Membrane’s integration extends that ecosystem into institutional lending and collateral management, supporting the broader use of sovereign digital collateral across onchain capital markets.