Moody’s has awarded an “A-bf” bond fund rating to Hill Lights International Limited, the issuer of OpenEden’s tokenized US T-bills, TBILL.
This rating elevates TBILL tokens to the investment-grade category. It also reflects their favorable investment attributes and marks a significant milestone for the company and the real-world asset (RWA) tokenization industry.
OpenEden’s Investment-Grade Rating Comes as Tokenized Treasuries Market Gain Momentum
According to Moody’s Ratings and Symbols Definitions, the rating indicates that Money Market Funds and Bond Funds rated A are considered to have several positive investment characteristics and are viewed as upper-medium-grade investment vehicles. OpenEden claims it is the first and only tokenized US T-Bill product globally to receive a credit rating.
Eugene Ng, co-founder of OpenEden, expressed his gratitude and enthusiasm for receiving Moody’s A rating. He sees this achievement as a vote of confidence in their tokenized T-Bill platform.
Read more: What is Tokenization on Blockchain?
“This investment grade rating simply validates the entire RWA sector , positioning us well for the convergence between tokenized RWAs and TradFi. This is a monumental breakthrough for the RWA sector as a whole, as an investment grade rating on our T-Bill product signals acceptance of tokenized RWAs as an investable asset class for institutions, corporates, and buy-side funds,” he said .
Furthermore, Eugene is confident in OpenEden’s TBILL infrastructure, which integrates regulatory, operational, and investment management expertise. Traditional financial institutions like hedge funds, buy-side trading firms, and corporate treasuries can also easily access TBILL tokens via its custody partners. These partners include BitGo, HexTrust, and SCB-backed Rakkar Digital.
While T-Bills have largely been held as an alternative to cash, tokenization enables greater utility for the asset class . OpenEden is partnering with more payment companies, DeFi protocols, crypto wallets, and other Web3 apps to allow users to access US T-bills yields across different blockchains. For instance, institutions can use their TBILL tokens as eligible collateral for financing.
Jeremy Ng, another co-founder of OpenEden, explained that while yields attract investors to acquire and hold crypto, payments keep people using crypto to facilitate a greater share of economic activities. He stressed that improving access to reliable, yield-bearing payment instruments is key to onboarding crypto’s next billion users.
Hence, OpenEden is also raising a fresh round of funding to introduce on-chain yields into more payment-focused use cases. It plans to close the funding round in the coming months.
Read more: What is The Impact of Real World Asset (RWA) Tokenization?
As the real-world asset tokenization industry has surged, T-bills have been popular for many issuers , including Franklin Templeton and BlackRock. According to RWA.xyz data, tokenized treasury products have a total market capitalization of $1.55 billion as of June 18. This figure represents approximately 14.26% growth over the last 30 days.
