A Bermudian company has launched what it describes as the world’s first regulated onchain vault, increasing accessibility to global investments for people who lack a brokerage account.

Plume, an open finance platform for institutional assets, announced that its subsidiary, Kimber Digital Assets Bermuda ISAC Ltd, has been granted a Class M Digital Asset Business Licence by the Bermuda Monetary Authority under the Digital Asset Business Act 2018.

Plume said that as a regulated vault manager, KDAB would combine “the transparency and accessibility of decentralised finance with prudential oversight from a globally respected financial regulator”.

The statement added that Plume was now among a group of globally recognised firms, including Circle, Coinbase, and Kraken, that have selected Bermuda's DABA framework as the regulatory home for their global operations.

The company compared its offering with that of the exchange-traded fund — a concept that has enabled retail investors to more easily access exposure to a broad range of assets.

KDAB’s regulated onchain vaults evolve the ETF model, Plume explained. Users deposit assets, receive proportional shares, earn yield, and redeem at net asset value. Unlike traditional funds, everything runs on immutable smart contracts instead of administrators or custodians.

“The ETF was the last great structural innovation in asset management,” said Chris Yin, cofounder and CEO of Plume. “It took the same underlying exposure, eg, equities, bonds, commodities, and made it radically more accessible by changing the wrapper. We are doing the same thing onchain.

“The KDAB vaults will be backed by regulated funds and high-quality assets sourced from the US, Hong Kong, and other major jurisdictions.

“Public funds like these KDAB vaults are not new. What is new is that a lawyer in Lagos, a freelancer in Manila, or a small-business owner in São Paulo can access that yield in seconds with a smartphone and a stablecoin, with the same regulatory protections that a pension fund in London expects.

“The BMA licence makes this real. It means this is not an experiment. It is a regulated financial product, supervised by a regulator that has been overseeing global financial services since 1969, operating on infrastructure that is more transparent and more auditable than anything that exists in traditional finance.

“The ETF democratised investing for anyone with a brokerage account. We are democratising it for everyone else.”

Salman Banaei, Plume’s general counsel, described the framework the BMA had applied for KDAB — with respect to asset-liability management, cybersecurity and anti-money laundering — as “an important milestone in the developing global onchain capital markets”.

“Most importantly, the BMA has adopted the latest technologies to deliver a regulatory outcome that is in parity — or in many instances exceeds — the goals of its policy mandates,” Mr Banaei added.

Teddy Pornprinya, Plume cofounder and chief business officer, said: “With this level of regulatory alignment we will be able to distribute high-quality assets to a broad audience globally, removing high barriers to entry and fulfilling the original promise of onchain finance of accessibility.

“We are ensuring that removing the walled gardens of traditional finance will still ensure the highest level of safety and compliance.”