Over $1B in US Treasurys have now been tokenized on-chain

The new milestone was reached shortly after the launch of BlackRock’s first tokenized asset fund — BUIDL, which joined 16 other tokenized government securities funds last week.

More than $1 billion worth of United States Treasurys now exist across Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, and other blockchains, helped in part by the recent launch of the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund.

BlackRock’s product, tickered “BUIDL,” was launched on Ethereum on March 20 and now boasts a market cap of $244.8 million. According to Etherscan, four transactions to the fund totaling $95 million over the week added a boost to the fund, making it the second largest tokenized government securities fund. 

BUIDL now only trails Franklin Templeton’s 11-month-old Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX), which has $360.2 million in U.S. Treasurys, according to data compiled by the parent firm of 21Shares on a Dune Analytics dashboard.

The dashboard shows that $1.08 billion in U.S. Treasurys have now been tokenized across 17 products.

The most recent $79.3 million deposit to BlackRock’s fund was made by real-world asset tokenization firm Ondo Finance, which will allow instant settlements for its own U.S. Treasury-backed token, OUSG. The firm made a total of $95 million in deposits across four transactions, according to Etherscan.

Ondo Finance now owns a 38% share in BUIDL, noted Tom Wan, a research strategist at 21.co in a March 27 X post.

BUIDL’s price is pegged 1:1 with the United States dollar and pays daily accrued dividends directly to investors each month. It was launched on Ethereum via the Securitize protocol.

In its Dune dashboard, 21.co described tokenized government treasurys as more appealing from both a risk and return perspective than stablecoin yields, given the current high-interest rate environment.

Related: BlackRock receives memecoins, NFTs after depositing $100M USDC onchain

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink recently 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 also be tokenized.

Ethereum also accounts for $700 million of all real-world assets (RWA) tokenized on-chain.

Franklin Templeton’s FOBXX is tokenized on Stellar and Polygon, which have the second and third largest market share of tokenized products at $358 million and $13 million, respectively.

WisdomTree 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.