The BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund has achieved a market cap of $500 million, making it the first tokenized treasury fund to reach this milestone. Launched less than four months ago, the fund, known as BlackRock BUIDL, currently holds $502.8 million worth of tokenized treasurys, as reported by Ethereum block explorer Etherscan.
This achievement was made possible by Ondo Finance, a real-world asset tokenization firm, which purchased more BUIDL tokens to use 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 its launch on March 15. Since then, BUIDL has maintained its position at the top.
BUIDL’s price is pegged 1:1 with the U.S. dollar and provides daily accrued dividends to investors through its partnership with real-world asset tokenization platform Securitize. Ondo’s OUSG holds the largest amount of BUIDL tokens at $173.7 million, while stablecoin issuer firm Mountain Protocol also holds BUIDL to back its permissionless yield-bearing stablecoin, USDM.
According to data compiled by 21Shares, the parent firm of Dune Analytics, there is now a total of $1.67 billion worth of tokenized treasury funds onchain. Ethereum is the leading blockchain for tokenization, accounting for over 75% of treasury funds, followed by Stellar at 23.9%.
In January, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink expressed his belief that blockchain tokenization could make capital markets more efficient. The Boston Consulting Group estimates that the tokenization market will reach $16 trillion by 2030. It is not limited to U.S. Treasurys, as stocks, real estate, and various other assets can also be tokenized.
Although the number of real-world asset transactions reached its peak in April 2024, data from Crypto Koryo shows that it has since declined significantly.
In addition to BlackRock, other asset management firms such as WisdomTree are also involved in tokenizing real-world assets. Blockchain-native firms like Ondo Finance, Backed Finance, Matrixdock, Maple Finance, and Swarm are also active in this space.
The real estate market is one of many sectors that is being transformed by blockchain technology.