- DeFi protocol Atlendis receives a $1.1 million loan from France’s public investment bank, demonstrating France’s pro-crypto stance.
- Atlendis has also obtained a PSAN license, which allows it to provide flexible services such as the creation of wallets linked to bank accounts.
- France’s clear crypto regulations have drawn major companies such as Crypto.com and Circle, making it a desirable location.
Atlendis, a French DeFi platform, has reached two significant milestones in its mission to reshape the future of finance.
First, it obtained a PSAN, the French equivalent of a crypto services provider license, demonstrating its commitment to complying with French crypto regulations as well as the upcoming European MiCA regulations.
The PSAN registration, in particular, served as a model for these new rules.
The second significant achievement was obtaining a €1 million loan ($1,108,055.00) from BPI, a French public investment bank.
These developments will help the company’s newest product, Atlendis Flow, which aims to simplify the decentralized lending protocol for institutional borrowers.
The new product supports direct crypto-to-fiat transactions, allowing for on-chain liquidity for real-world use cases. Like many early blockchain initiatives in the pure finance space, the move is expected to reduce costs and speed up processes by automating everything on the blockchain.
The traditional credit fund structure is also regarded as opaque, with many funds open only to accredited investors.
Atlendis aims to make this more transparent and accessible to all investors who are willing to undergo KYC.
Introducing Atlendis Flow
Atlendis began by lending money on the blockchain to Web3 companies, DAOs, DeFi protocols, and market makers. However, the demise of FTX and subsequent market turmoil forced Atlendis to adapt and evolve its offerings.
“Last year, the Three Arrows catastrophe and the FTX case showed that the market was immature,” Atlantis CEO Alexis Masseron stated.
Responding to criticisms against DeFi, including comparisons to Ponzi schemes, they chose to transition to a new model. According to Masseron, “It was just too risky. It was not worth sending up loans that would give you 20% APY because that would imply a high risk of default. So we basically closed all of our previous pools to focus on real-world assets and fintech companies.”
Atlendis focused its efforts on the private debt market in particular.
“It’s a market that is exploding,” Masseron said. “It’s already massive, representing more than $1.5 trillion as of today.”
The Atlendis Flow product acts as a bridge between the Atlendis protocol and customers’ bank accounts, allowing the bridge to pass custody on and off-ramp for online customers.
A PSAN license was required to onboard these non-crypto companies. According to Masseron, “The PSAN is actually very well perceived in the world. Because right now, France has one of the clearest jurisdictions and regulations crypto-wise in the world.”
Atlendis will also be able to set up wallets for borrowers to exit or enter directly from their bank accounts after registering.
Two Fintech companies, Karmen and Fluna, already benefit from Atlelndis’s services.
Karmen provides non-dilutive growth financing to digital businesses. Fluna is a pan-African trade finance marketplace that provides credit, market intelligence tools, and support to Africa’s mid-market exporters.
With many more companies poised to join, this trend is expected to bring more non-crypto businesses on board the blockchain.
“It’s not a matter of ‘if,’ but of ‘when’, Masseron said. “We are now treated seriously.”
