Goldman, BlackRock alumni raise $4M to bring farm and apartment loans onchain
What's the deal? New York startup Birch Hill HoldingsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has closed a $4 million seed round led by Multicoin CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, with ParaFi CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Castle Island VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and NascentDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → participating. The round brings its total funding to $6.5 million.
What's the endgame? Birch Hill plans to package and securitise pools of US apartment, farm, and energy loans to be held on public blockchains, all within the US regulatory framework. "Loan originators need new sources of capital, and onchain lenders need credit they can trust," said chief executive officer Bhavin Vaid.
The firm runs three divisions: a Vaults arm that curates credit for lending protocol Morpho, a Strategies unit building onchain credit products, and an Enterprise division that has applied to FINRA for broker-dealer membership to place offerings with accredited investors.
Who's running it? Vaid is a former Goldman SachsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → analyst who later worked at Cerberus Capital Management. Co-founder and chief operating officer Connor Flanagan spent more than four years at BlackRock, including on its Aladdin risk platform.
Who's joining? The capital funds an eight-person team, including three hires from vault platform YearnDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → — among them Brad Schlagel, who led development of Yearn v3 — and Traver Normandi, who joins from risk firm GauntletDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → to lead business development.
Why now? Washington is warming to onchain finance. Birch Hill met with the Securities and Exchange Commission's Crypto Task Force in August, the same month the regulator proposed rules to ease token-based fundraising.
What could go wrong? The FINRA application is not an approval, and distribution hinges on it clearing. Birch Hill also enters a crowded field: established players such as Maple, Centrifuge, and Securitize already connect credit products to blockchains.
The signal: Tokenised private credit sits at roughly $4.2 billion, with about half used in decentralised finance. Birch Hill's bet is that packaging traditional loan assets in structures banks and insurers recognise is what turns a growing niche into a market they can actually fund.
Read more: finance.yahoo.com
Image credit: Birch Hill Holdings
