Bill Barhydt built Abra around a simple idea: Crypto should act like a bank.
In 2018, Abra became one of the first companies to offer what Barhydt describes as a full crypto banking service, allowing customers to trade, earn, borrow and make payments from a single platform.
Eight years later, as the company prepares to go public through a merger with SPAC New Providence Acquisition Corp. III, he said he believes the industry is entering a completely new phase.
The deal, announced in March, values Abra at $750 million and will see the combined company renamed Abra Financial Inc., with plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker ABRX, subject to regulatory approvals.
“The goal is to list this summer, pending SEC approval,” Barhydt told CoinDesk in an interview
Abra Financial
Today, Abra operates as an asset tokenization and distribution platform under its parent company, Abra Financial Holdings.
The distribution side is centered on Abra Capital Management, an SEC-registered investment adviser serving high net worth individuals, ultra high net worth clients and institutions. Through the platform, customers can access investment strategies for digital assets, return products, stakes and secured lending.
AbraFi, the tokenization arm, is focused on creating tokenized financial products on the Solana blockchain in partnership with a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). Its flagship offering, USDAF, is a yield-bearing dollar-denominated asset that has attracted increasing interest from institutions and wealthy investors, according to Barhydt.
The company plans to expand this lineup in the coming months with BTCAF, a bitcoin-based dividend product that will be available to advisory clients and, outside the US, retail investors. Barhydt says investors should expect a growing range of tokenized return products built around digital assets.
Lending
Lending is a major growth area. Abra already allows customers to borrow against bitcoin ether (ETH) and solana (SOL) holdings, and Barhydt says the company is investing heavily in expanding its lending options with new products and services.
The broader ambition, he says, is to become the industry’s “killer crypto banking platform,” combining tokenization, custody, return generation, staking and lending through both proprietary products and third-party offerings.
For Barhydt, however, the larger opportunity extends beyond crypto-native investors.
Tokenization
Wall Street’s attention is increasingly shifting away from bitcoin price movements and toward tokenization of real assets, according to Barhydt.
In his view, the ability to tokenize assets and make them liquid, tradable and usable as collateral through decentralized finance (DeFi) is a far more consequential development than debates over exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or short-term market cycles.
“Everything is being tokenized and liquid via DeFi,” says Barhydt.
That narrative, he says, resonates with institutional investors because it connects crypto infrastructure to broader financial markets. Anything that can be pledged as collateral in traditional financing can ultimately be represented on the chain and used in decentralized loan markets.
As Abra works through the final stages of its public listing process, Barhydt sees the company positioned at the intersection of these trends: tokenization, return generation and digital asset management.
“The next generation of wealth management is onchain,” he says.
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