Nouriel Roubini, the economist who told the US Senate Banking Committee in October 2018 that crypto was "the mother of all scams," has co-founded Atlas Capital Team Inc., where he serves as Chief Economist, and co-authored the whitepaper for USAFi, a permissionless ERC-20 token backed by a Nasdaq-listed ETF. The token received approval from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) under its Asset-Referenced Virtual Asset Rulebook and targets a Q3 2026 launch, the company announced June 26.
USAFi tracks the Atlas America Fund (ticker: USAF), an SEC-registered ETF diversified across US Treasuries, gold, food and strategic commodities, defense, cyber, and AI-exposed industries. Custodian is Bank of New York. As of June 22, 2026, the fund had posted a net return of 11.11% since inception 19 months earlier, with 5.47% annualized volatility and a Sharpe ratio of 0.55, according to Atlas.
Securitize handled the tokenization. The architecture keeps collateral at Bank of New York under VARA oversight while the token trades freely on permissionless chains as an ERC-20. Atlas describes the design 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 company 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."
