Birch Hill Holdings, an institutional digital asset infrastructure firm focused on on-chain lending and tokenized asset markets, said it raised $2.5 million in pre-seed funding to build compliant, institution-ready access to blockchain-based credit and income strategies. The round was co-led by ParaFi Capital and Castle Island Ventures, with participation from Nascent, FalconX Ventures, Coin Operated Group, The Operating Group, JST Digital, Flowdesk, and a group of industry executives.
The company said it is positioning its platform around capital preservation and risk discipline, offering fiduciaries a structure intended to meet institutional expectations for governance, transparency, reporting, and operational controls while accessing income opportunities in on-chain credit markets. Birch Hill said its operating model relies on institutional-grade service providers across custody, monitoring, identity verification, and audit infrastructure to support compliance requirements.
Birch Hill’s leadership team blends traditional credit and institutional risk backgrounds with experience in digital asset infrastructure. CEO Bhavin Vaid previously worked in structured credit at Goldman Sachs and in private equity at Cerberus Capital, and later spent time at digital asset investment firm 10T Holdings. CTO Jack Forlines and COO Connor Flanagan previously worked on institutional risk systems within BlackRock’s Aladdin platform before moving into digital asset data and infrastructure, and later co-founded a digital asset research and analytics firm that now operates as Birch Hill Labs, which the company said underpins its quantitative risk framework.
The firm said its initial strategies will launch through established blockchain lending platforms, with plans to expand into a broader set of institutional credit strategies to accommodate different compliance and risk requirements. At the center of its approach is the Birch Hill Collateral Risk Framework, which the company said is designed to reduce loss potential and provide transparent, auditable governance supported by real-time oversight of collateral quality, liquidity conditions, and pricing data integrity.
Birch Hill said the new capital will be used to expand its technical risk and engineering teams and to pursue regulatory registrations needed to offer compliant institutional access to on-chain credit and tokenized asset markets.
KEY QUOTES
“Credit markets stand to benefit from the efficiencies of blockchain-based settlement, but institutional participation has been limited by the need for stronger risk oversight and operational clarity. Our goal is to bring the discipline of traditional credit investing together with modern infrastructure in a way that meets institutional standards for governance, transparency, and risk management.”
Bhavin Vaid, Chief Executive Officer, Birch Hill Holdings
“Birch Hill’s approach to risk management reflects the kind of discipline institutional allocators expect. Their focus on governance, reporting, and credit fundamentals is well aligned with the direction institutional capital is moving in digital asset markets.”
Ben Forman, Founder & Managing Partner, ParaFi Capital
“We continue to see growing interest from institutional investors in thoughtfully structured exposure to blockchain-based credit. Birch Hill’s team brings the combination of traditional finance experience and digital asset expertise required to build durable infrastructure in this space.”
Matt Walsh, Founding Partner, Castle Island Ventures
