Moody’s Awards Investment-Grade “A-bf” Rating to OpenEden’s Tokenized T-Bills

The global credit rating agency, Moody’s Ratings, has awarded an “A-bf” bond fund rating to Hill Lights International Limited – the regulated fund that issues OpenEden’s tokenized U.S. T-bills.

The rating places OpenEden’s TBILL tokens within the “investment-grade” quality category. According to Moody’s Ratings and Symbols Definitions: “Money Market Funds and Bond Funds rated A … are judged to possess many favorable investment attributes and are considered as upper-medium-grade investment vehicles”.

As tokenized real-world assets (“RWA”) have surged in popularity, T-bills, in particular, have proven a popular choice for many issuers, including the likes of Franklin Templeton’s “BENJI” token, and BlackRock’s rival “BUIDL” token.

Other notable tokenized T-Bill issuers include Ondo Finance, Maple Finance, Matrixport, and Backed Finance, according to a survey of tokenized U.S. T-Bills published in a “Crypto Treasury Management” guide for Web3 CFOs late last year.

However, OpenEden is the first, and only tokenized US T-Bill product globally to receive a credit rating.

Eugene Ng, Co-Founder of OpenEden said, “Receiving an ‘A’ rating from Moody’s is a significant milestone for the industry, and a vote of confidence in our tokenized T-Bill platform. It validates our dedication to building a reliable primitive for the DeFi ecosystem to access yields from tokenized U.S. Treasury Bills”.

While T-Bills have largely been held as an alternative to cash, tokenization enables greater utility for the asset class. The Company is actively partnering with more payments companies, DeFi protocols, crypto wallets, and other Web3 apps to enable users to access US T-bills yields across different blockchains.

For instance, institutions can use their TBILL tokens as eligible collateral for financing, thanks to a partnership with Hidden Road Partners and Standard Chartered’s Zodia Custody.

Traditional financial institutions like hedge funds, buy-side trading firms, and corporate treasuries can also easily access OpenEden’s TBILL tokens via its custody partners like BitGo, HexTrust, and SCB-backed Rakkar Digital.