Standard Chartered announced on Tuesday that it has established a framework enabling institutional clients to post a tokenised short-term U.S. Treasury fund as collateral on the crypto trading platform OKX. The initiative was developed in partnership with BlackRock and OKX and targets OKX Middle East’s VIP and institutional user base.
Under the arrangement, clients will be able to use the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity (BUIDL) Fund as collateral for trading activity on OKX Middle East. The BUIDL vehicle is a tokenised short-term fund that holds cash, U.S. Treasury bills and repurchase agreements, and it distributes yield on-chain.
Standard Chartered will act as the custodian for the off-exchange collateral arrangement. The banks and platform described the structure as the first framework of this type to be supported by a globally systemically important bank. According to the partners, the design reduces the need for clients to move assets back and forth between a custodian and a trading venue while keeping protections outside the exchange.
The launch brings together a traditional banking custodian role with a tokenised cash management product and a crypto trading venue. For institutional and VIP users on OKX Middle East, the practical effect is that the tokenised BUIDL Fund can serve directly as collateral for trading rather than requiring conversion or transfer processes that span multiple entities.
The fund’s stated holdings - cash, U.S. Treasury bills and repurchase agreements - and its feature of distributing yield on-chain are core elements of the arrangement as presented by the partners. Standard Chartered’s custodial role is central to the off-exchange collateral setup described by the firms.
Context and implications
This framework links a tokenised Treasury liquidity product with a licensed banking custodian and a crypto trading platform, concentrating custody responsibility with Standard Chartered while enabling collateral use on OKX Middle East. The partners framed the structure as reducing operational transfers and maintaining protections outside the exchange.