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Nouriel Roubini, the economist who built a career warning about financial bubbles and once called Bitcoin the “mother of all scams,” is now launching a blockchain-based token. The USAF+ token, issued by Atlas AI Labs, is fully collateralized by Roubini’s own Atlas America Fund ETF, which trades on Nasdaq under the ticker USAF.
Atlas AI Labs, a subsidiary of Atlas Capital Team based in Dubai, received in-principle approval from the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) to issue the permissionless asset-backed token. The approval allows USAF+ to trade and settle around the clock on blockchain infrastructure, no intermediaries required.
From Dr. Doom to DeFi convert
Roubini first entered the asset management world with the Atlas America Fund, which launched on November 20, 2024, on Nasdaq. The actively managed, multi-asset ETF bundles US Treasury bonds, gold, real estate investment trusts, and food commodities into a single vehicle designed to weather economic turbulence.
The fund is managed by Roubini alongside Carlo Zola and Puneet Agarwal. It marked Roubini’s first venture into the ETF space, a notable departure for an academic economist better known for forecasting the 2008 financial crisis than for building investment products.
Atlas Capital Team had been exploring the intersection of traditional assets and fintech innovations as early as 2023, including climate-related tokens. The USAF+ token represents the culmination of that trajectory: taking a regulated, Nasdaq-listed ETF and wrapping it in a tokenized structure that can operate outside the constraints of traditional market hours.
Why tokenizing an ETF matters
This is someone who testified before the US Senate in 2018 calling blockchain “the most overhyped technology ever.” His pivot doesn’t just represent a personal evolution. It signals something broader about where the financial industry’s center of gravity is shifting.
The permissionless nature of the USAF+ token is a key design choice. Unlike some tokenized securities that restrict who can hold or trade them, a permissionless token is accessible to anyone with a compatible wallet. That’s a meaningful distinction for a product explicitly aimed at democratizing access to a diversified, institutional-grade portfolio.
What this means for investors
For crypto-native investors, the USAF+ token represents a regulated on-ramp into traditional asset classes without leaving blockchain rails. Holding tokenized exposure to Treasuries, gold, REITs, and commodities through a single token is a genuinely useful tool for portfolio diversification.
There are risks, naturally. The token’s value is only as good as the collateralization mechanism and the regulatory framework supporting it. If the USAF ETF underperforms, or if VARA’s regulatory stance shifts, the token faces the same headwinds. Smart contract risk also remains a factor for any asset-backed token, though the specifics of the USAF+ technical architecture will determine how significant that concern is in practice.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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