Stabledash Live · · 19 min
$1.34B in USDf and a GENIUS-Ready Institutional Rail with Artem Tolkachev of Falcon Finance
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Artem Tolkachev
Key takeaways
Artem Tolkachev says USDf is one of the top 10 stablecoins on Ethereum, with 1,340,000,000 in total value.
Falcon Finance has launched fUSD, a regulated, GENIUS-ready stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank with segregated trust reserves and Deloitte audits.
Tolkachev expects heavy stablecoin fragmentation as TradFi brings volume on chain, with different stablecoins serving particular audiences.
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Summary
Falcon's Artem Tolkachev pairs a synthetic dollar for crypto institutions with a bank-issued regulated stablecoin and argues that tokenized assets only matter if they can work on chain.
Falcon Finance's synthetic dollar USDf is one of the top 10 stablecoins on Ethereum, according to Artem Tolkachev, the company's Chief RWA Officer. He says it is over 1,000,000,000 in circulation and points to 1,340,000,000 in total value.
A synthetic dollar for institutions
Tolkachev says holders can stake USDf to earn yield from a diversified set of market-neutral strategies: funding rate arbitrage in both directions, cross-exchange arbitrage, staking and option strategies, "not just a basis trade."
The core client base of Falcon Finance is institutional crypto holders such as trading desks, market makers and whales, he says. Minting has a minimum of 10 k for a classic mint and 50 k for an innovative mint, and most of the collateral is Bitcoin.
“Tokenization, it's basically it's packaging. It's not a product. So what is a product is this authorization and liquidity. So if RWA is just coming on chain and sits on chain and nobody can use them actually or, like, five wallets can touch them, and they're not doing anything rather than sits and earn some yield, it it doesn't make much sense.”
Artem TolkachevA regulated second dollar
Falcon Finance has also launched fUSD, described as a regulated, GENIUS-ready asset issued by Anchorage Digital Bank. Tolkachev calls it a "super straightforward model" with segregated trust, Deloitte audits, reserves and supervision. He says Falcon chose to partner with Anchorage because he considers it a leader in the space.
Tokenization as packaging
Zach Fowler noted that over eighteen months Bitcoin market cap fell 33% while tokenized RWAs rose 480%. Tolkachev's view is that tokenization "is packaging. It's not a product." An asset that only sits on chain "doesn't mean anything," he says, and putting assets on chain was already possible in 2018.
His answer for Falcon Finance is a broad collateral policy: if the team can price an asset and build a risk-reward model on top of it, Falcon will accept it as collateral and provide liquidity against it.
A fragmenting market
Tolkachev says the industry is moving away from one stablecoin for everyone and toward specific stablecoins for specific client needs. As TradFi brings volume on chain, he expects "not everybody will use USDT or USDC" and predicts a lot of fragmentation. He also expects protocols that let users deal in, loop and exit RWAs to grow quickly this year and next year.
Falcon Finance is betting on more than one kind of dollar. USDf serves crypto institutions looking for yield, and fUSD offers a bank-issued regulated option. Behind both is Tolkachev's view that the stablecoin market will split by audience and that on-chain assets only add value when they can be used.
Deloitte, Falcon Finance, Anchorage Digital Bank, and Wintermute come up most.
- People
- Artem Tolkachev
- Drew Rogers
- Zach Fowler
- Companies
- Deloitte
- Falcon Finance
- Anchorage Digital Bank
- Wintermute
- Dfns
