Capital Markets / Tokenized Securities

Tokenized Treasuries: The $15 Billion Market and the Funds Behind It

Tokenized U.S. Treasury products held $14.94 billion on-chain as of September 2026, spread across 25 funds. Circle's USYC, Ondo's USDY and BlackRock's BUIDL lead.

Summary

Tokenized treasuries are blockchain tokens that give the holder a claim on short-dated U.S. government debt. In most cases the token is a share in a money market fund or a similar vehicle, and a regulated custodian holds the assets. As of 24 September 2026, rwa.xyz tracked $14.94 billion in distributed tokenized Treasury products across 25 assets and 83,483 holders. The total was down 5.85% over 30 days.

How it works

Franklin Templeton started the category. Its Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX, token BENJI) launched in 2021 as the first U.S.-registered fund to use a public blockchain as its official record of share ownership. BlackRock followed on 20 March 2024 with BUIDL, the USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, issued on Ethereum. Securitize is transfer agent and BNY is custodian and administrator, and the fund holds cash, Treasury bills and repo. Five years on, the market is no longer one or two flagship funds. It is a league table where no single product holds more than about a sixth of the total.

The largest funds as of 24 September 2026, by rwa.xyz figures, were Circle's USYC at $2.43 billion, Ondo's USDY at $2.27 billion, BlackRock's BUIDL at $2.24 billion and WisdomTree's WTGXX at $1.23 billion. Franklin Templeton spreads its fund across several tokens: iBENJI at $1.72 billion, BENJI at $668 million and two smaller variants. Together they put Franklin above $2.5 billion. Next come J.P. Morgan's JLTXX at $832 million, Invesco's USTB at $560 million and Ondo's institutional fund OUSG at $391 million.

Most of these products are fund shares, not Treasuries held directly. The fund buys T-bills and repo, a custodian holds them, and a transfer agent records ownership on-chain. Holders are usually whitelisted, qualified investors. What changes is how the share moves. A transfer between approved wallets settles on the chain itself, at any hour and on weekends.

The main use today is on-chain cash that earns a yield. Fund tokens are posted as collateral on trading venues and held as reserves behind stablecoins. BlackRock made the reserve link explicit on 3 August 2026, when it launched OnChain shares of the BlackRock Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund (BSTBL) and a new BlackRock Daily Reinvestment Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle (BRSRV). It said both intend to qualify as eligible reserve assets for U.S. payment stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act (CoinDesk).

The settlement case is still being built. A tokenized Treasury trade settles in one step only when the cash leg is also on-chain, as a stablecoin, a tokenized deposit or another fund token. Where the cash still moves by bank wire, the token moves at chain speed and the payment at bank speed. So the next phase of this market depends as much on tokenized cash as on more Treasury funds.

Latest developments (as of September 2026). On 5 August 2026 BlackRock added tokenized share classes to its European Institutional Cash Series money market funds. The share classes are built on Kinexys by J.P. Morgan and minted on Ethereum, and they cover funds with a combined $311 billion in assets across 15 markets (FinTech Global). Two days earlier, when BlackRock launched its two U.S. vehicles, CoinDesk put BUIDL at roughly $2.5 billion. BUIDL stood at $2.24 billion on rwa.xyz on 24 September. The tracker's total fell 5.85% over 30 days to $14.94 billion while the holder count rose 4.37% in a week, so fewer dollars are now spread across more wallets.

Business goal

Impact

Sources

Frequently Asked Questions

What are tokenized treasuries?

Tokenized treasuries are blockchain tokens that give the holder a claim on US Treasury securities. Most are shares in a fund that holds Treasuries through a custodian, and the tokens trade and settle on-chain.

How large is the tokenized treasury market?

Tokenized US Treasury products held $14.94 billion on-chain as of September 2026, according to rwa.xyz. BlackRock's BUIDL accounted for about $2.24 billion of that, behind Circle's USYC and Ondo's USDY, so no single fund dominates the category.

Why treasuries first?

Because they are the most standardized and most creditworthy assets in the market, so valuation and custody are solved problems. That leaves settlement as the only variable being tested, which is why government securities tokenize faster than any other asset class.

What does settlement look like once both legs are tokenized?

The asset and the cash move in the same transaction or neither moves. That removes the settlement window entirely, along with the counterparty exposure and trapped collateral that sit inside it. It only works when both legs live on the same infrastructure, which is the case for building the cash leg first.