NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Birch Hill Holdings ("Birch Hill"), an institutional digital asset infrastructure firm focused on onchain lending and tokenized asset markets, today announced it has closed a $2.5 million pre-seed funding round co-led by ParaFi Capital and Castle Island Ventures. Birch Hill is focused on capital preservation, structuring institutional lending strategies with risk discipline at the forefront. The firm provides fiduciaries with a compliant structure for accessing income opportunities in blockchain-based credit markets, supported by institutional-grade risk modeling and governance. The round includes further participation from Nascent, FalconX Ventures, Coin Operated Group, The Operating Group, JST Digital, and Flowdesk alongside industry executives including Ramin Kamfar (Founder & CEO of Bluerock) among others.
The founding team brings experience across traditional credit markets and digital asset infrastructure. CEO Bhavin Vaid began his career in structured credit at Goldman Sachs and later invested in private equity at Cerberus Capital. He also spent time at digital asset investment firm 10T Holdings, where he developed firsthand familiarity with the institutional infrastructure supporting the sector. 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. Together, they later cofounded a digital asset research and analytics firm, now operating as Birch Hill Labs, which underpins the firm’s quantitative risk framework.
“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,” said Bhavin Vaid, CEO of Birch Hill Holdings. “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.”
Birch Hill works with institutional-grade service providers across custody, monitoring, identity verification, and audit infrastructure to support a compliant operating environment. The firm's initial strategies are launching through established blockchain lending platforms, with plans to expand into a broader suite of institutional credit strategies designed to accommodate varying compliance and risk requirements.
“Birch Hill’s approach to risk management reflects the kind of discipline institutional allocators expect,” said Ben Forman, Founder & Managing Partner at ParaFi Capital. “Their focus on governance, reporting, and credit fundamentals is well aligned with the direction institutional capital is moving in digital asset markets.”
“We continue to see growing interest from institutional investors in thoughtfully structured exposure to blockchain-based credit,” said Matt Walsh, Founding Partner at Castle Island Ventures. “Birch Hill’s team brings the combination of traditional finance experience and digital asset expertise required to build durable infrastructure in this space.”
At the core of the firm’s offering is the Birch Hill Collateral Risk Framework, designed to help reduce loss potential and support transparent, auditable governance. The framework is supported by real-time oversight of collateral quality, liquidity conditions, and pricing data integrity.
With this capital, Birch Hill will expand its technical risk and engineering teams, and pursue the regulatory registrations necessary to offer compliant institutional access to onchain credit and tokenized asset markets.
About Birch Hill Holdings
Birch Hill is a digital asset infrastructure firm focused on onchain lending and tokenized asset markets. The founding team originated structured products at Goldman Sachs and built institutional risk systems at BlackRock. For more information, visit www.birchhill.io
Contacts
Media Contact: Bhavin Vaid bv@birchhill.io