Nouriel Roubini, the economist who called crypto "the mother of all scams" in 2018 Senate testimony, has co-founded Atlas Capital Team Inc. as Chief Economist and co-authored the whitepaper for USAFi, a permissionless ERC-20 token backed by a Nasdaq-listed ETF. Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority approved the token under its Asset-Referenced Virtual Asset Rulebook. Atlas targets a Q3 2026 launch, the company announced June 26.
USAFi tracks the Atlas America Fund (ticker: USAF), an SEC-registered ETF holding US Treasuries, gold, food and strategic commodities, and equities in defense, cyber, and AI-adjacent industries. Bank of New York is custodian. As of June 22, 2026, the fund had returned 11.11% net since inception 19 months prior, with annualized volatility of 5.47% and a Sharpe ratio of 0.55, per Atlas.
Collateral remains at Bank of New York under VARA oversight while the token trades as a permissionless ERC-20. Securitize handled the tokenization. Atlas describes the structure as the first "regulated permissionless security."
"For years I argued that most digital assets offered no protection from this, because they had no real assets behind them," Roubini told CoinDesk on June 23. In the announcement, he added: "What Atlas has built is different: a reserve diversified across Treasuries, gold, food and strategic commodities, defense, cyber, and other industries being reshaped by AI."
