CM|Jul 10, 2026 13:24
A very innovative on chain forex solution, with the biggest feature being the creation of an interest bearing structure.
Traditional tokenized forex schemes typically involve 1:1 collateralization for issuance, similar to USDC. Tenbin's plan is to use USDC mint and then split the collateral into two parts. One part, about 17%, will be placed in the FCM/CME system as margin to establish a long position, while the remaining 83% will remain on the chain.
How does this structure generate revenue
1. Deploy USDC remaining on the chain to the vault to earn profits.
2. Long positions in the foreign exchange market on CME are benefiting from carrying high interest currencies.
For example, currently tMXN has a yield of around 9% on the Mexican peso, and tBRL has a yield of 19% on the Brazilian real. (At the beginning of the launch, it was relatively high, but gradually stabilized with the increase of volume)
There are two points that need to be explained
Using only around 17% USDC as margin, is there a risk of liquidation due to overstocking? In theory, this is opening up a long leverage, but in the FCM/CME system, it is different from Crypto. The margin call here has a relatively loose T+1 elasticity. If there is a shortage of margin, the broker can provide short-term financing first and then notify Tenbin to make up, so the agreement usually has one working day to true up. At this point, simply withdraw USDC from the vault and replenish the margin.
So the USDC vault on the chain is like a buffer and has one day to react. Of course, theoretically, there may be a problem where the funds in the vault are borrowed and cannot be withdrawn in a short period of time. This risk exists but can be avoided through team fund management strategies.
The second issue is the carry income of high interest currencies, which arises from the market reflecting the interest rate difference between the two countries in advance into futures prices. High interest currencies are usually traded at a discount in the futures market, which converges with maturity and generates carry returns. This is because investors often use the spread to engage in carry trades, borrowing low interest currency to exchange for high interest currency for savings or investment, in order to earn the intermediate spread. So in order to counter this arbitrage, the forward price of high-yield currencies is usually cheaper than spot prices in the market.
Of course, the risk is that if BRL or MXN depreciates significantly against the US dollar, users' dollar based returns will be eaten up by exchange rate losses, or even losses. This is a problem of foreign exchange rate fluctuations, not protocol design.
This design easily reminds people of Ethena, but the difference is that short hedge structures like Ethena usually experience margin pressure when the underlying asset rises, while the redemption pressure of this structure is more likely to occur when the underlying asset falls.
This plan can also be extended to fields such as gold, energy, metals, and other commodities, which are themselves RWA tokenization platforms.
The on chain foreign exchange market is still very early and has a small scale. All solutions are in the experimental and trial stage, but there may be great market opportunities in the future. Research should be done well to control risks.
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