Bullish, the Peter Thiel-backed crypto exchange and parent company of CoinDesk, has invested 250 Bitcoin — worth roughly $19.2 million — into Mezo, a Bitcoin-focused finance platform targeting institutional investors.
The deal marks one of the more concrete examples of a publicly listed crypto company putting its own treasury to work in a structured yield product.
A portion of Bullish’s corporate Bitcoin holdings will be deployed through Mezo Prime, Mezo’s institutional-grade product, while staying within Bullish’s own custody and compliance setup.
That last part matters. Institutional investors have long been cautious about yield products that require giving up custody of assets. Mezo Prime is designed to address exactly that concern.
Mezo Prime gives institutional depositors isolated Bitcoin vaults. There is no commingling of assets across accounts — each client’s holdings are kept separate.
When clients lock their Bitcoin for a set period, they receive holdings that entitle them to a cut of paid interest, as well as trading and bridging fees generated on the platform.
Those holdings can also be used as collateral to borrow Mezo’s Bitcoin-backed stablecoin, which is pegged to the U.S. dollar.
The product is now available to clients of Anchorage Digital Bank, which provides crypto-focused banking services to institutional clients.
Mezo CEO Matt Luongo told Investing.com the company is currently in talks with other institutional investors.
“The way Mezo works, every new institution that deposits creates more protocol activity, which generates more fees for everyone in the system,” Luongo said. “The flywheel compounds.”
He added: “We built Prime so that the hundredth institution benefits from the first ninety-nine.”
Bullish went public as part of a wave of crypto industry listings. Other names in that wave included eToro, stablecoin issuer Circle, and Gemini — the exchange founded by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, which completed its IPO in September.
Galaxy Digital also moved its listing to the Nasdaq from the Toronto Stock Exchange in May.
Bullish itself was seeded by Thiel’s Founders Fund and Thiel Capital, with additional backing from Nomura and Galaxy Digital founder Mike Novogratz.
The stock is up roughly 1% year-to-date.
Mezo Prime is now live for Anchorage Digital Bank clients, with Mezo in active conversations to bring on additional institutional depositors.
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