Vaults Are Like SPVs
Vaults Are Like SPVs
Vaults Are Like SPVs
How the offshore dollar system is being rebuilt onchain, and why financial institutions are already moving.
How the offshore dollar system is being rebuilt onchain, and why financial institutions are already moving.
Inside This Report
Inside This Report
The Oldest Pattern in Modern Finance
The Oldest Pattern in Modern Finance
When rules make dollars expensive to hold at home, the dollars move somewhere else. That is how the eurodollar market began in London in 1957. Regulators called it a curiosity, and two decades later it was the core funding market of the global system. The same mechanism is now building a dollar market in smart-contract vaults.
When rules make dollars expensive to hold at home, the dollars move somewhere else. That is how the eurodollar market began in London in 1957. Regulators called it a curiosity, and two decades later it was the core funding market of the global system. The same mechanism is now building a dollar market in smart-contract vaults.
What a Vault Actually Is
What a Vault Actually Is
A vault is a smart contract that takes deposits of digital dollars, lends them out under rules fixed in advance, and passes the return to depositors. That is the special purpose vehicle of the last cycle, with the trustee, collateral manager and servicer replaced by code and a named risk-curator. The report maps the roles one to one.
A vault is a smart contract that takes deposits of digital dollars, lends them out under rules fixed in advance, and passes the return to depositors. That is the special purpose vehicle of the last cycle, with the trustee, collateral manager and servicer replaced by code and a named risk-curator. The report maps the roles one to one.
Institutions Are Already Moving
Institutions Are Already Moving
Three rule changes in 2025 and 2026 altered what banks may hold, custody and pay out. Each was followed within months by a visible response: custody launches at Citi, State Street and Standard Chartered, tokenized money-market funds from Goldman Sachs and BNY, and $113 million of stablecoin rewards paid to customers by Coinbase in one quarter.
Three rule changes in 2025 and 2026 altered what banks may hold, custody and pay out. Each was followed within months by a visible response: custody launches at Citi, State Street and Standard Chartered, tokenized money-market funds from Goldman Sachs and BNY, and $113 million of stablecoin rewards paid to customers by Coinbase in one quarter.
The Risks Are Familiar and Fixable
The Risks Are Familiar and Fixable
In November 2025 a product that promised instant withdrawals while holding illiquid assets failed, and more than $3 billion of capital was destroyed. That is the 2007 structured-investment-vehicle failure at a fraction of the size. The report sets out the safeguards that would prevent a repeat, and why they are still affordable at today's size.
In November 2025 a product that promised instant withdrawals while holding illiquid assets failed, and more than $3 billion of capital was destroyed. That is the 2007 structured-investment-vehicle failure at a fraction of the size. The report sets out the safeguards that would prevent a repeat, and why they are still affordable at today's size.
Why DeFi and Institutional Readers Need This Report
Understand the institutional migration
See why banks, asset managers, and financial platforms are moving toward onchain vaults as regulation reshapes where capital can live and earn.
Connect DeFi to financial history
Put today’s vault economy in context by comparing it with eurodollars, SPVs, securitization, and the shadow-banking system.
Price the risk you are actually holding
A bank deposit hides the loan book behind it. A vault publishes its positions in real time. The report explains what that disclosure makes visible, and what the November 2025 failure cost the depositors whose vault disclosed nothing.
Could You Answer These Today?
Banks built $1.2 trillion of conduits on the special purpose vehicle, and the academic record proved afterwards that regulatory arbitrage was the main motive. When post-crisis rules closed that venue, the demand did not disappear. It moved, into CLOs, then private credit, then Bermuda reinsurance, and now into vaults. So which securitization role did the curator inherit, and which one did the code replace? And what does the vault economy still lack that the offshore dollar system also lacked for fifty years, until its crisis forced a rescue?
Why DeFi and Institutional Readers Need This Report
Understand the institutional migration
See why banks, asset managers, and financial platforms are moving toward onchain vaults as regulation reshapes where capital can live and earn.
Connect DeFi to financial history
Put today’s vault economy in context by comparing it with eurodollars, SPVs, securitization, and the shadow-banking system.
Price the risk you are actually holding
A bank deposit hides the loan book behind it. A vault publishes its positions in real time. The report explains what that disclosure makes visible, and what the November 2025 failure cost the depositors whose vault disclosed nothing.