Dubai, United Arab Emirates, June 18th, 2026, Chainwire
Calais (Calais Digital Assets), a Singapore-headquartered multi-strategy quantitative investment fund, has become the first institutional client to deploy UBS uMINT as off-exchange settlement (OES) collateral in active trading operations — marking a significant milestone in the real-world adoption of institutional-grade tokenised assets.
The transaction was executed across an integrated infrastructure layer comprising Bybit, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume and a licensed virtual asset platform operator across multiple jurisdictions; ByCustody, Bybit’s institutional custody arm; and DigiFT, authorised distributor of the UBS USD Money Market Investment Fund (“uMINT”), the first tokenized investment fund launched by UBS Asset Management. Under the OES collateral model, Calais’s uMINT holdings remain in ByCustody’s custody while simultaneously serving as live trading collateral on Bybit — allowing the fund to maintain yield on its collateral position throughout the duration of its trading activities.
From Infrastructure to Capital Efficiency
The announcement follows the collaboration between Bybit and DigiFT in 2025 to expand institutional collateral support for UBS uMINT, which established the technical and regulatory framework for uMINT to be accepted as trading collateral. Calais’s live deployment closes the loop between infrastructure and practice — demonstrating that the efficiency gains of yield-bearing tokenised collateral are not theoretical, but executable at institutional scale today.
Traditional OES collateral arrangements require trading counterparties to post idle cash or cash equivalents to an exchange — capital that sits undeployed and earns nothing. By utilizing uMINT — an institutional style USD money market fund built on the Ethereum public blockchain — Calais maintains continuous yield on assets that would otherwise be locked in a non-earning position. The result is a meaningful improvement in capital efficiency: collateral that works harder, without compromising the security or liquidity profile required by institutional trading operations.
A Multi-Party Infrastructure Stack
The transaction is enabled by a purpose-built three-layer architecture.
- DigiFT, as the authorised licensed distributor of the UBS uMINT token, provides the regulated access layer through which institutional clients subscribe to and hold uMINT on-chain.
- ByCustody provides institutional-grade, segregated custody of the token within Bybit’s licensed operating structure, ensuring assets are held securely and recognised as eligible collateral for trading purposes.
- Bybit’s exchange infrastructure accepts the custodied uMINT as settlement collateral, enabling Calais to trade without pre-funding positions with cash.
This structure separates custody from deployment — a distinction that matters operationally and from a risk management perspective. Assets do not need to leave regulated custody to function as exchange collateral, preserving the security architecture institutional allocators require.
Lily Yan, Founder & CEO, Calais Digital Assets: “As a systematic, quantitative fund, capital efficiency is not a marginal consideration — it is core to how we construct and manage portfolios. Deploying uMINT as OES collateral through this infrastructure allows us to earn yield on assets that would otherwise be frozen as idle margin. This is precisely the kind of structural improvement that institutional adoption of tokenised assets should enable, and we are pleased to be among the first to execute it in live trading conditions.”