BlackRock ‘Tokenized’ Treasury Fund BUIDL Tops $500 Million

Authored by Brayden Lindrea via CoinTelegraph.com,

The BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund has reached a $500 million market cap, making it the first tokenized treasury fund to reach this milestone.

Launched less than four months ago, BlackRock BUIDL, currently holds $502.8 million worth of tokenized Treasurys, according to Ethereum block explorer Etherscan.

The milestone was reached after real-world asset tokenization firm Ondo Finance bought more BUIDL, which it uses as a backing asset for its OUSG token.

Transactions made with BUIDL’s contract address over the last 8 hours. Source: Etherscan

BlackRock’s BUIDL surpassed the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (BENJI) as the world’s largest tokenized treasury fund in late April — less than six weeks after it launched on March 15. BUIDL has held the top position ever since.

BUIDL’s price is pegged 1:1 with the U.S. dollar and pays daily accrued dividends directly to investors each month through its partnership with real-world asset tokenization platform Securitize.

Ondo’s OUSG is the largest holder of BUIDL at $173.7 million, while stablecoin issuer firm Mountain Protocol also holds BUIDL to back its permissionless yield-bearing stablecoin, USDM.

There is now $1.67 billion worth of tokenized treasury funds onchain, according to Dune Analytics data compiled by the parent firm of 21Shares.

Ethereum is the leading tokenization blockchain with more than a 75% share of treasury funds, followed by Stellar at 23.9%.

In January, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink voiced that capital markets could be made more efficient by blockchain tokenization, which Boston Consulting Group estimates will become a $16 trillion market by 2030.

U.S. Treasurys are only one piece of the pie — stocks, real estate and many other assets can be tokenized too.

The number of real-world asset transactions peaked in April 2024, however, the tally has fallen considerably since then, Dune Analytics data from Crypto Koryo shows.

Number of real-world asset transactions onchain since December 2023. Source: Dune Analytics

WisdomTree is another large asset management firm tokenizing RWAs, while Ondo Finance, Backed Finance, Matrixdock, Maple Finance and Swarm are among the blockchain-native firms operating in the space.