Centrifuge’s Anemoy Attracts Investment From Celo As Tokenized Treasury Assets Bubble

Centrifuge, a leading tokenized real-world assets protocol, has expanded operations onto Celo.

Announced on March 29, an unnamed entity from the Celo ecosystem invested $100,000 into tokenized treasuries via Anemoy, a Centrifuge-native asset manager, and allocated an additional $1 million for later deployment.

“Celo ecosystem members completed the first Centrifuge RWA transaction on Celo, allocating up to $1M into Anemoy's Liquid Treasury Fund,” Centrifuge said. “We're looking forward to bringing more high-quality assets and liquidity to the Celo ecosystem.”

“The Celo ecosystem views Centrifuge as a strategic partner in the wider Celo ecosystem to onramp additional asset classes, like for private credit, which Centrifuge has a long history of bringing on-chain in a safe, compliant way,” said Alex Witt, the former chief financial officer of the Celo Foundation.

Centrifuge now operates across five networks, following deployments on Arbitrum, Base, Ethereum, and its Centrifuge Chain Polkadot parachain. Celo is a Layer 1 network boasting a total value locked of $210 million, according to DeFi Llama.

Tokenized U.S. treasuries bubble

The news comes as the RWA sector is booming, with 21Shares estimating the assets under management (AUM) of on-chain treasuries has rallied to a new all-time high above $1.1 billion.

The milestone follows BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, launching a foray into asset tokenization last week in the form of the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL).

BUIDL has already taken in more than $244 million from investors in roughly one week of operations, ranking it as the second-largest tokenized treasuries fund behind Franklin Templeton’s OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund with $360.5 million.

Anemoy was unveiled as Centrifuge’s first native manager in August 2023, serving as a vehicle for investment into the bubbling tokenized U.S. treasuries sector.

Celo’s investment brings Anemoy’s AUM to $4.66 million, with the project boasting an allocation from Polkadot’s Web3 Foundation and an integration from Finoa — a crypto custodian regulated by Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority.

Anemoy is set to enjoy a significant expansion in AUM amid increasing allocations from web3 treasuries, with Frax governance passing a proposal to invest $20 million into treasury bills via Anemoy in December, and Gnosis DAO also voting to invest $10 million in January.

“We see Treasury yields as a commodity with the core differentiator being the legal framework," said Lucas Vogelsang, CEO and co-founder of Centrifuge.

Centrifuge also launched Centrifuge Prime, an RWA investment platform targeting DAO treasuries, in June 2023. Centrifuge told The Defiant that scaling Prime’s operations is currently a top priority for the project.