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Magyar28 Oct 2026
Birch Hill, a New York startup founded by Goldman Sachs and BlackRock alumni, closed a $4 million seed round led by Multicoin Capital, taking total funding to $6.5 million. The firm curates vaults on Morpho, has applied to FINRA for broker-dealer status and plans to securitize US multifamily, agriculture and energy loans onchain.
Birch Hill, a New York startup that wants to bring real-world loans to public blockchains, has closed a $4 million seed round led by Multicoin Capital, Decrypt reports. ParaFi Capital, Castle Island Ventures and Nascent also took part, bringing the company’s total funding to $6.5 million.
Who is behind Birch Hill
CEO Bhavin Vaid is a former Goldman Sachs investment banking analyst who later worked in private equity at Cerberus Capital Management and co-founded crypto investment firm Halo Capital. Co-founder and COO Connor Flanagan spent more than four years at BlackRock, including on its Aladdin risk platform, before roles at Digital Currency Group and analytics firm Flipside.
The new money funds an eight-person team. It includes three hires from vault platform Yearn, among them Brad Schlagel, who led development of Yearn v3, plus Traver Normandi from risk firm Gauntlet, who will lead business development.
How the business works
Birch Hill runs three divisions. Its Vaults arm is an official curator on Morpho, the onchain lending protocol, where it assesses credit and sets risk parameters for vaults and markets. Its Strategies unit builds onchain credit products, including one called Birch Hill Absolute Value. Its Enterprise division has applied for FINRA broker-dealer membership, which would allow it to place private credit offerings with verified accredited investors.
Longer term the company plans to securitize pools of US multifamily, agriculture and energy loans designed to be held onchain inside the US regulatory framework. Decrypt says Birch Hill met the SEC’s Crypto Task Force in August. “Loan originators need new sources of capital, and onchain lenders need credit they can trust,” Vaid said.
What it means for traders
Tokenized private credit is one of the fastest growing corners of real-world assets, and Morpho is increasingly the plumbing: it already powers Coinbase’s fixed-rate USDC loans against Bitcoin. For DeFi users this could mean more yield options backed by real loans, but those loans carry credit risk that does not show up in a token price until something goes wrong. Check who curates a vault and what collateral sits behind it before chasing a rate.
If you want exposure to DeFi tokens rather than vaults, compare fees and listings in our crypto exchange comparison or read our reviews of BingX, ranked first in our tests, and OKX, ranked second.
This article is for information only and is not financial advice.
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