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