CatalystWireBeta

Launch of US$118M Tokenised Coral Reef Programme

In brief · summary, not quotable

Marechale Capital plc announced the launch of a US$118 million tokenised coral reef programme by Coral Futures Corporation on its subsidiary Blubird's new platform, representing the first tokenised issuance on this second-generation system. This pilot registration includes approximately 124,400 sections of living coral, each valued at one square metre, with a potential to scale to two million sections valued at US$2 billion. Blubird's white-label solution will manage the registry and marketplace, generating revenue through transaction fees ranging from 0.5% to 2% per sale or transfer.

Full announcement

Select text to share a quote on X · sign in to keep highlights & notes in your MAC notes

  • Reinforces Blubird's ability to support institutional-scale assets beyond conventional systems

Marechale Capital plc, the AIM-quoted digital merchant bank, is pleased to announce the launch of a tokenised reef programme by Coral Futures Corporation ("Coral Futures") on Blubird's newly launched, second-generation tokenisation platform, digital asset registry and marketplace (the "Platform").

Blubird, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Group, is initially hosting a pilot registration of natural capital assets, comprising c.124,400 individually recorded sections ("Reef Section") of living cultivated coral located in Western Australia. Each section measures one square metre and the pilot registration has a total value of US$118 million. The programme has been structured to scale to a further two million sections of reef interests under registry administration at full build-out, with an estimated aggregate value of approximately US$2 billion.

Natural capital as a tokenised asset class

Coral Futures is a Western Australian company built on three decades of in-water operational experience. It holds 45% of Western Australia's coral quota and operates under state approvals that permit it to manage the underlying ecosystem.

A tokenised Reef Section represents an ownership interest in one mapped square metre of living coral, with the token holder's exact rights defined by the programme's legal contracts. As a result of the nature of the Reef Sections, Coral Futures was attracted to Blubird's registry solution which issues each Reef Section together with its legal contracts and maintains legal identity, mapped coordinates, and chain of title for the life of the asset. Blubird is providing the advice and management of a white-label tokenised registry and marketplace solution that resides on Coral Futures' own website, operating under the Coral Futures brand, built and operated on Blubird infrastructure.

The Coral Futures tokens will initially have four classes as follows:

  • an adoption-style class for contributors and supporters of the reef who wish their contribution to be

recorded;

  • corporate class recognised within Coral Futures marketing that sits as a record of that company's support

of "green" initiatives;

  • a remediation class for operators satisfying obligations arising from documented marine impact; and
  • a restricted investment class offered under the financial services licensing that applies in each jurisdiction.

​

While coral has been treated as a legal asset class for four decades, it has lacked the counterpart instrument allowing it to be certified, transferred and attributed a unit of value. By tokenising the Reef Sections, Coral Futures is making a decades-old asset class more widely accessible. Tokenisation using Blubird's registry and Ricardian contract technology provides immutable ownership records through a blockchain-based registry, with embedded auditable legal provenance with enhanced settlement efficiencies.

Institutional-scale deployment

This launch marks the first tokenised issuance programme on Blubird's newly launched Platform since its acquisition by the Group and further demonstrates its ability to hold institutional-scale asset classes that conventional systems cannot facilitate.

Demand for the instruments comes from two sources: firstly, industrial operators which acquire sections as structured offsets against documented marine impact; and, secondly, individuals who hold them directly, from supporters with a single adopted square meter to eligible investors participating through the programme's regulated investment class.

Highly scalable revenue model

The registry and marketplace has been delivered as a white-label product, operating under the Coral Futures brand while built and powered by Blubird's underlying infrastructure. This agreement provides an attractive blueprint for Blubird to secure similar partnerships as more organisations seek to unlock the ownership, transparency and liquidity benefits enabled by tokenisation.

Blubird operates a SaaS licensing and royalty fee model, charging fees of 0.5% to 2% per transaction, with the potential to generate recurring revenue from asset activity conducted through the Platform. Blubird is not responsible for marketing assets placed on the Platform and transaction fees are earned only when assets are sold or transferred.

Accordingly, the Company cannot provide certainty regarding the timing of any asset sales or transfers and, as a result, cannot guarantee when assets will move off the Blubird Platform or when the associated transaction fees will be recognised.

Patrick Booth-Clibborn, Chief Executive Officer of Marechale Capital plc, said:

"The launch of the first tokenised issuance programme on Blubird's second-generation platform is a significant milestone for the Group. It demonstrates our ability to support institutional-scale programmes across asset classes that conventional market infrastructure cannot accommodate, unlocking value for issuers and commercial opportunities for the Group."

Corey Billington, Chief Executive Officer of Blubird, commented:

"We are immensely proud to have deployed our registry and marketplace behind this groundbreaking conservation programme. The most significant inhibitor Coral Futures faced was proving and securing the ownership of its offering. No spreadsheet can do that. Subsequently, this represents exactly what a tokenised asset registry was built to do. Coral Futures brings twenty-six years of operating credibility to this programme, and our platform makes sure that every record lives up to it."

Wayne McKenzie-Brown, Founder and Executive Director of Coral Futures, added:

"The Coral Futures team have grown and worked coral in these waters for twenty-six years, and in all that time the hardest part was never the reef. It was the paperwork behind who owns what. If an operator is going to stand behind a square meter of our reef as remediation, they need to prove exactly what they hold without asking us to vouch for it from a spreadsheet. That is what putting the tokenisation programme on a registry gives them, and it is why we engaged Blubird to help. Their team, and a platform that gave us our own white-label registry and marketplace, provided everything we needed to get this off the ground the way we wanted."

Cleaned text: letterheads, contacts and legal notices removed. View the original announcement ↗ · Company filings. Not investment advice.

Share this quote

Quote card
Post on X WhatsApp Download image

The link opens this announcement with the quote highlighted. Quotes are checked against the original text.

Add a note