US-based equipment financing platform Trad.Fi has announced plans to raise up to $650 million in private credit on-chain over the next 48 months.
According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph, the initiative targets one of the largest and least digital credit markets in the U.S., a multitrillion-dollar industry that finances manufacturing equipment, industrial systems, and residential solar installations.
Trad.Fi said the $650 million is not deployed capital, but a credit pipeline minted on-chain backed by committed senior credit facilities and signed letters of intent from anchor borrowers. The company said it currently has approximately $85 million in signed term sheets, with approximately $40 million expected to close soon.
The initiative aims to address financing challenges in the manufacturing industry by reducing digital credit approval to one business day, compared to the weeks or months it takes to approve a traditional line of credit.
Trad.Fi CEO Alexander Szul said equipment financing in the U.S. is a fast-growing industry, but it still relies on paperwork, which slows credit approval and costs companies money.
He added:
“Small businesses lose deals waiting for funding. The only way to solve that is to move capital, records, and workflows to programmable rails.”
Investors gain exposure through tokenized credit pools
The initiative also includes an on-chain investment pool that provides investors with equipment financing loans originated through the platform. The pool will be operated by an as-yet unnamed third party and is expected to open in the coming weeks. US-based investors are not eligible in the early stages.
W3 provides the infrastructure to tokenize loans and manage associated credit records across Base, Arc, and Avalanche blockchains. Legal agreements related to the loan, such as UCC-1 applications and borrower documents, will remain off-chain.
Other companies offering similar tokenized credit products include Centrifuge, Tradable, Maple Finance, Figure Technologies, and Credix.
The initiative will further fuel growth in the tokenized real-world assets (RWA) market, which has cooled in recent weeks, with total value declining 4.4% to $31.3 billion over the past 30 days.
Total RWA values by category. Source: RWA.xyz
Tokenized U.S. Treasuries accounted for $14.8 billion of the total RWA market, while tokenized corporate credit accounted for $1.2 billion as the smallest segment, according to RWA.xyz data.
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