Kraken and Maple closed an onchain warehouse financing facility for digital asset-backed loans Tuesday, a structure the two companies described as the first to replicate the core protections of institutional credit markets in a fully onchain environment.
The USDC-denominated facility funds Kraken's over-the-counter lending program, with Maple providing senior financing through a dedicated special purpose vehicle built to be bankruptcy-remote. Clients can borrow against their Bitcoin and Ether holdings rather than liquidate them. Kraken affiliates act as originator, seller, and servicer of the loans while retaining a junior position in the capital structure, a first-loss layer that aligns the exchange's incentives with those of senior lenders.
Kraken Financial, the exchange's Wyoming-chartered Special Purpose Depository Institution and regulated qualified custodian, holds the underlying collateral. Zaria, an independent SPV administrator, serves as the administrative agent. Neither company disclosed the size of the facility or its commercial terms.
"The infrastructure that powers a multi-trillion-dollar ABS market in traditional finance has never existed onchain, until now," said Sidney Powell, CEO and Co-Founder of Maple, in the announcement. "This facility applies that model to digital asset collateral in a fully onchain environment, with the structural protections institutions actually require."
Warehouse financing has underpinned traditional credit markets for decades, commonly used to fund mortgage pools, auto loans, and consumer credit before those assets are packaged into larger investment vehicles. The Kraken-Maple deal applies that model to BTC and ETH collateral, with collateral balances and loan performance visible onchain in real time.
"Our clients want access to the same capital formation tools that have powered traditional credit markets for decades," said Arjun Sethi, Co-CEO of Kraken. "This facility enables institutions and crypto holders to access liquidity without selling their assets, creating new ways for digital assets to be used within the financial system. By bringing proven credit infrastructure to onchain finance, we can improve capital efficiency, expand access to credit, and unlock greater utility for digital asset holders seeking financing for everyday needs and larger investment opportunities alike."
Why the SPV structure matters for lenders
For institutional lenders on Maple's platform, the facility opens access to senior, overcollateralized yield backed by BTC and ETH. The bankruptcy-remote SPV separates the financing vehicle from Kraken's balance sheet, a structural protection standard in commercial mortgage-backed securities and other asset-backed markets. That separation gives senior lenders a claim on collateral that sits outside Kraken's corporate estate in a default scenario.
RWA.xyz data shows tokenized credit has grown to more than $6.2 billion in distributed value from roughly $1.87 billion a year earlier. The same dataset identifies Maple as the largest platform in that segment, with approximately $1.4 billion in tokenized credit assets under management.
How the deal fits Kraken's broader institutional push
The warehouse facility follows a period of active expansion for Kraken. The exchange partnered with Nasdaq to develop tokenized equities, with Kraken's xStockz product providing infrastructure designed to support Nasdaq's issuer-sponsored equity tokens. Deutsche Borse acquired a $200 million stake in Kraken in mid-February, placing the parent company's valuation at $13.3 billion.
The facility also arrives as institutional crypto lending continues its recovery from 2022, when the collapse of Celsius and BlockFi pushed lenders toward more structured collateral management and bankruptcy protections.
Tokenized credit market draws wider attention
Bernstein said in May that tokenized credit could represent a $4 trillion addressable market as blockchain-based lending extends into mortgage, auto, and small-business finance. Ripple secured a $200 million credit facility from Neuberger Berman earlier this year to support its institutional prime brokerage lending business.
Other recent entrants include Capital B, which unveiled a Bitcoin-backed credit product for European investors, and Morpho, which released a white paper for a fixed-rate, fixed-term onchain lending protocol. Not every project reached that point. Radiant Capital said it would wind down this month after it failed to recover from a $50 million exploit in 2024.
The Kraken-Maple announcement described the facility as a repeatable template for additional originators, though no further originators or timelines were named at the time of publication.
Kristian Koch
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