Kamino Launches tGBP Market on Solana, Bringing Sterling Lending Onchain

Kamino Finance KMNO$0.035+1.6% has opened a tGBP market, a lending pool for a British pound stablecoin that lets Solana users borrow sterling against dollar, bitcoin and staked-SOL collateral. The market is curated by Steakhouse Financial, and Kamino announced on September 23 that "sterling-denominated credit is now live on Solana."

tGBP is issued by BCP Technologies, a UK cryptoasset firm registered with the Financial Conduct Authority. Each token tracks the pound one-to-one, and in the new Kamino tGBP market it can be supplied to earn a lending rate in pounds or borrowed against USDC, cbBTC or JitoSOL, according to Kamino's launch post.

Kamino's pitch is about currency. Stablecoins hold more than $300 billion and almost all of it is pegged to the dollar, the post says, so a UK business that wants money onchain has had to convert pounds into dollar stablecoins, carry the exchange-rate risk, and convert back later. A sterling stablecoin with a credit market attached removes that round trip.

How the Kamino tGBP market works: collateral, LTVs and Steakhouse's role

The tGBP market is an isolated pool, meaning its liquidity, collateral and risk settings are kept apart from every other Kamino market, so a problem in one does not spill into another. Steakhouse Financial, as curator, decides which assets count as collateral, how much can be borrowed against each, and the supply and borrow caps, and adjusts them as conditions change.

At launch, Kamino's post lists three collateral types and their maximum loan-to-value (LTV) ratios, the share of a deposit's value that can be borrowed:

• USDC at 85%
• cbBTC, Coinbase's wrapped bitcoin, at 75%
• JitoSOL, the liquid staking token from Jito JTO$0.457-12.7%, at 60%

A USDC deposit worth 100 can therefore back a sterling loan worth up to 85, while the more volatile JitoSOL supports less. Both tGBP and USDC are borrowable against that collateral. Steakhouse spelled out the two-way design in its own post: "Suppliers of tGBP can also access USDC liquidity through the market. Lenders and vault curators can supply any of the assets to the market."

That two-way structure is the interesting part. Deposit USDC and borrow tGBP, and you hold dollars against a pound debt; supply tGBP and borrow USDC, and the exposure runs the other way. Kamino describes the result as the pound becoming "a position rather than a balance," one that can be adjusted on weekends when spot currency markets are closed. A bank's foreign-exchange desk keeps office hours; a Solana lending pool does not.

Neither Kamino nor Steakhouse published the launch caps, so how much sterling the market can absorb on day one is not public. The live market page shows current rates and utilisation.

Steakhouse has run this playbook on Kamino before: it also curates the isolated PAXG gold market that opened in July, where tokenized gold from Paxos backs loans of the USDG stablecoin.

What tGBP is: BCP Technologies' FCA-registered sterling stablecoin

tGBP is a privately issued stablecoin backed by cash and cash equivalents held by BCP Technologies Ltd, which has also taken part in the FCA's regulatory sandbox, according to the announcement. Kamino's launch thread adds that the reserve is independently attested each month.

Supply follows the reserve. New tGBP is minted when eligible businesses send pounds to BCP over UK banking rails, and tokens are burned when verified clients redeem and the pounds go back to their bank account. The post also sets out what tGBP is not: it pays no interest to holders, it is not electronic money, and it is not covered by the UK's Financial Services Compensation Scheme, the deposit-protection backstop for British bank accounts.

Kamino sorts digital sterling into three forms. The Bank of England has proposed a central-bank digital pound, and commercial banks are exploring tokenized deposits; tGBP is in the third group, reserve-backed private stablecoins, and it is the only one of the three already circulating on public blockchains.

BCP's own statement in the launch post sets out why the issuer wanted a lending venue: "We built tGBP so UK institutions could hold and move pounds on public blockchains. Kamino gives those pounds a credit market, which is what turns a stablecoin into something a balance sheet can use."

Kamino's sterling launch extends its regulated-asset lending on Solana

Kamino calls itself Solana's largest lending protocol, with more than $2.7 billion in deposits, and says it has originated more than $21 billion in onchain loans over three years with no bad debt to lenders. The day before the sterling launch, Kamino's lending program, which hosts the new market, was signed by 2,476 wallets across 51,105 transactions, according to our own program data for September 22. Kamino's announcement frames sterling as the next asset after the credit markets it has built for tokenized treasuries, equities and gold.

The pace is quick. Kamino added institutional vaults from Galaxy last week and a fixed-rate Multiply vault earlier this week.

What the launch cannot show yet is demand. BCP and Kamino pitch tGBP at UK institutions that want to hold and move pounds onchain, and the market now gives them a venue with an FCA-registered issuer and a named curator. The caps Steakhouse sets and the utilisation the market shows over the coming weeks will be the first measure of how much sterling credit Solana users want.