Nectar Group has raised $5 million in seed financing for HoneyB, a planned Bitcoin income platform that aims to let institutions borrow against their Bitcoin holdings and deploy the proceeds into tokenized and traditional-market income strategies.
The round values Nectar at $30 million on a post-money basis and was completed through a SAFE, or Simple Agreement for Future Equity, paired with a one-for-one token warrant. The structure gives participants a future claim on both company equity and a corresponding allocation of any token issued under the warrant’s terms.
Portal Ventures led the financing, joined by Peer Venture Partners, Anchorage Digital Ventures, an unnamed family office and angel backers. Josh Gordon, Nectar Group’s co-founder and chief executive, said the fundraise began near the end of the fourth quarter of 2025 and closed at the beginning of the third quarter of 2026.
No financing participant received a board seat, observer right or advisory role, according to Gordon. Nectar plans to direct the capital toward product development, custody and financing integrations, legal and compliance work, and distribution.
HoneyB targets bitcoin-backed income strategies
HoneyB is being designed for Bitcoin holders seeking to generate income without selling their underlying assets. Its initial structure would allow customers to post Bitcoin as collateral, borrow stablecoins against that collateral and place the borrowed capital into income-producing strategies.
Those strategies are expected to include exposure to U.S. Treasuries, fixed income, credit, gold, volatility products and options. The approach gives users continued exposure to Bitcoin price movements while adding leverage and a second layer of market risk through the borrowed stablecoins and the investments purchased with them.
Gordon said HoneyB’s underlying investment product is designed to target returns of roughly 10% annually. After borrowing costs, platform fees and the effect of loan-to-value ratios, HoneyB is targeting annualized returns of about 2% to 4% on a user’s Bitcoin position.
Those figures are targets rather than fixed yields. A borrower’s outcome would depend on the performance of the selected strategy, the cost of stablecoin financing and the amount borrowed against the Bitcoin collateral. A decline in Bitcoin’s value could also require a customer to post more collateral or reduce debt, depending on the loan terms.
The model places HoneyB in an increasingly competitive area of digital-asset finance: platforms trying to turn Bitcoin from a passive treasury asset into collateral for lending, tokenized funds and structured investment products. The challenge is that a Bitcoin-backed income product must balance the potential yield from the deployed capital against financing rates and collateral-management risks that can rise sharply during volatile markets.
Custody arrangements will shape the platform’s risk profile
HoneyB plans to give clients two potential custody models. Bitcoin collateral could be held through an onchain smart contract, or through a three-party arrangement involving the borrower, lender and custodian.
Anchorage Digital and BitGo provide custody for clients connected to HoneyB, Gordon said. The platform is also building infrastructure across Ethereum, Sui, Solana and Arch Network, suggesting that the company intends to support more than one blockchain environment as its products develop.
The custody design will be central to the platform’s institutional pitch. Bitcoin holders using a borrowing structure need clarity on who controls collateral, how liquidation procedures work and whether assets can be moved without the borrower’s authorization. Three-party custody structures are commonly designed to separate custody from lending activity, though the protections available to a customer depend on the specific contractual and operational setup.
HoneyB’s first planned investment strategy will use a fund offering access to a diversified portfolio from Simplify Asset Management, a registered investment adviser with about $13.5 billion under management, according to Nectar. Alphaledger will manage and tokenize the fund, while Amber Capital SPC is listed as the issuer of the investment product.
That arrangement connects several parties: HoneyB would handle the customer-facing Bitcoin collateral and financing workflow; the borrower would receive stablecoins; and those funds would be allocated to an investment product managed and tokenized by separate firms. The structure could give Bitcoin holders access to strategies usually reached through conventional asset-management channels, but it also means users face operational dependencies beyond Bitcoin custody alone.
Institutional launch is planned for late 2026
HoneyB is scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of 2026, initially serving institutional customers outside the United States. Eligible organizations will need to complete business verification checks before accessing the product.
Nectar plans to introduce a U.S. institutional offering later, though Gordon did not provide a timetable. A retail product for customers inside and outside the U.S. is targeted for the first quarter of 2027.
The staged rollout reflects the compliance burden attached to Bitcoin-backed lending and products that route capital into securities-like or fund-based strategies. Starting with verified offshore institutions could let HoneyB test its lending, custody and investment flows with a narrower customer base before expanding to retail users, where disclosure, suitability and licensing requirements may be more demanding.
HoneyB’s revenue model will rely on platform fees charged on capital deployed through its products. That makes the economics sensitive to both demand for Bitcoin-backed borrowing and the spread between the returns generated by its investment strategies and the financing cost paid by customers.
Nectar plans engineering and distribution hires
Nectar was founded in October 2025 and has grown to more than 12 employees, Gordon said. The company expects to hire in engineering and business development following the seed round.
The financing gives Nectar runway to build an institutional product before attempting a retail launch, while its choice of a SAFE with a token warrant preserves flexibility over how a future network or token may fit into the business. For prospective customers, the more immediate questions will be the terms of Bitcoin collateral custody, stablecoin borrowing costs, liquidation thresholds and the net yield available after every layer of fees.
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