Calais Digital Assets, a Singapore-headquartered quantitative investment fund, has put UBS's tokenized money-market fund uMINT to work as live off-exchange settlement collateral on Bybit. The setup went live June 18, letting the fund earn yield on assets that would normally sit idle as margin. It's a concrete step toward making traditional cash-management instruments usable in crypto derivatives.
How the three-party collateral works
The arrangement involves three players. DigiFT handles regulated distribution of uMINT. ByCustody holds the actual tokenized fund shares. And Bybit recognizes that custodied position as valid exchange collateral. No cash or stablecoins need to be parked — the trader keeps earning money-market yield on the same assets backing their margin. That’s a shift from the usual model, where margin means idle capital.
What uMINT is — and isn't
UBS launched uMINT back in November 2024 as its first tokenized investment fund, built on Ethereum and aimed at institutional cash management. It's a conservative money-market exposure, not a volatile crypto asset. Think of it as a digital equivalent of a Treasury money fund — the kind of thing institutions hold to park cash, not to speculate. That makes it a safer fit for margin than, say, a meme coin or a volatile DeFi token.
Growing trend: tokenized Treasuries as margin
This deployment follows a broader push. In October 2025, Bybit, DigiFT, and UBS uMINT first announced institutional access to use uMINT as collateral. Now it's live. Tokenized US Treasuries have grown from $2 billion to $9 billion in the past 18 months, with heavyweights like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Circle offering on-chain T-bills that can also serve as margin. That market jumped 125% in the last year alone, and while Ethereum dominates tokenized real-world assets, one rival chain surged 28% — though the facts don't name which one.
Calais is the first to actually deploy uMINT as live collateral on Bybit. Whether other funds follow quickly will depend on how smoothly the three-party custody-and-recognition loop holds up under real trading pressure. The pieces are in place; now the market watches the execution.
