BlackRock BUIDL

BlackRock's BUIDL fund and Ondo Finance's USDY are the two leading tokenized US Treasury products. Both represent the institutional-grade leading edge of bringing traditional fixed-income exposure on-chain. The category is moving fast: there are now half a dozen serious tokenized Treasury products, with AUM compounding quarterly. If you want to see what regulated, yield-bearing crypto looks like in 2026, this is it.

BUIDL (BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund) launched in March 2024 as BlackRock's first tokenized fund on a public blockchain (Ethereum, with subsequent expansion to other chains). The product is a money market fund that holds short-duration US Treasuries, repo agreements, and cash. The fund's units are represented as ERC-20 tokens on-chain, with the fund administration handled by Securitize (the regulated transfer agent). Token holders receive daily dividend payments in BUIDL tokens, with the yield reflecting the underlying Treasury portfolio's performance.

The access tier matters. BUIDL is only available to "qualified purchasers" — US-regulated category that requires either $5M+ in investable assets (individuals) or $25M+ in investments (institutions). This restricts BUIDL to institutional and ultra-high-net-worth participants. The product is not available to most retail users. The structural reasons are regulatory: a publicly-offered tokenized fund would require different regulatory treatment under the Investment Company Act.

BUIDL's growth has been rapid. From a launch AUM of ~$100M in March 2024, the fund has grown to over $1B AUM through 2024-2025 and continues to expand. The growth reflects institutional appetite for yield-bearing on-chain dollar exposure: DeFi protocols increasingly use BUIDL as collateral, treasury management products integrate BUIDL for their idle cash, and several crypto-native institutions hold BUIDL as part of their working capital.

Ondo Finance's USDY (Ondo US Dollar Yield) launched in 2023 as a retail-accessible analog to BUIDL. USDY is a yield-bearing stablecoin-like token backed by short-duration US Treasuries and bank deposits. Unlike BUIDL, USDY is available to non-US persons (and to US accredited investors through certain channels) — the structure is designed for broader access while still maintaining institutional-quality underlying collateral. USDY's yield accrues to the token (the token balance increases over time rather than receiving separate dividend distributions, which is more user-friendly for DeFi integrations).

USDY has grown rapidly through 2024-2026 and is increasingly integrated into DeFi protocols as collateral, particularly on chains beyond Ethereum. Ondo has also launched other products in the category (OUSG for institutional tokenized Treasuries, USDY versions on multiple chains).

The broader tokenized Treasury landscape. As of 2026, the category includes:

BUIDL (BlackRock + Securitize). Largest by AUM. Institutional-only.

USDY (Ondo). Retail-accessible (non-US). Yield-bearing token format.

OUSG (Ondo). Institutional tokenized Treasuries on multiple chains.

Franklin Templeton's FOBXX. Tokenized money market fund, available through Stellar primarily.

WisdomTree's WTSYX. Tokenized Treasury fund with on-chain representation.

Several others (Mountain Protocol's USDM, Hashnote's USYC, Maple Finance products, Securitize-issued tokens for various institutional issuers) round out the category.

Why this matters. The tokenized Treasury category represents the cleanest institutional-grade crypto product that currently exists. It combines: regulated underlying assets (US Treasuries), institutional issuers (BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, etc.), regulated transfer agents (Securitize), on-chain composability (the tokens can be used as collateral in DeFi protocols), and yield (currently 4-5% range based on Treasury yields).

The downstream implications are significant. MakerDAO has shifted substantial portions of DAI's backing to tokenized Treasury holdings, transforming the protocol's revenue model. Several DeFi lending protocols now accept tokenized Treasuries as collateral, expanding the addressable institutional capital. The category provides a bridge between traditional fixed income and on-chain composability that didn't exist before 2023.

For most retail users, direct exposure to tokenized Treasuries is limited by access restrictions. But the indirect exposure (through MakerDAO's DAI, through DeFi protocols that hold tokenized Treasuries as backing, through stablecoins that route reserves through these products) is substantial. Understanding what tokenized Treasuries are and how they work is foundational context for understanding modern DeFi yield sources.