Tokenized Treasuries Hit $10B — The New Yield‐Bearing Base Layer

What happened

Tokenized U.S. Treasuries and cash‐equivalents have moved from concept to measurable scale: tokenized Treasuries surpassed USD 10 billion in assets under management across public and permissioned chains in late Nov–early Dec 2025. The milestone spans products such as Franklin Templeton’s FOBXX/Benji Investments, Ondo’s OUSG, BlackRock’s BUIDL, and MakerDAO’s on‐chain T‐Bill strategies, and follows rapid growth from sub‐$1 billion in early 2023 to multi‐billion scale by late 2024. Key drivers cited are ~4–5% short‐dated Treasury yields, improved custody/settlement infrastructure, and clearer regulatory framing for money‐market‐like token products.

Why this matters

Market impact — institutionalization of a programmable, yield‐bearing base layer. Hitting $10B is not yet systemically large, but it signals product–market fit and invites serious market‐making, compliance, and infrastructure buildout. Immediate implications:

• Liquidity and trading: tokenized T‐Bills are being used as on‐chain collateral, in structured vaults, and as “on‐chain savings” for DAOs, creating new interest‐rate‐linked basis and arbitrage trades (NAV vs token price, cross‐venue spreads, wrapped variants).
• Product and fintech design: fintechs and stablecoin issuers can consider backing liabilities with T‐Bill tokens or embedding yield in wallets and settlement rails; remittance and cross‐border use cases gain a dollar‐linked, yield‐bearing settlement asset.
• Risk and operations: these instruments are dual‐stack assets — they combine traditional finance risks (custodian failure, legal enforceability) with crypto risks (smart‐contract exploits, oracle failures). Differences in redemption mechanics, KYC/whitelisting, and liquidity tiers require careful modeling.
• Opportunity for quants: new persistent sources of carry and basis trades in a programmable environment; necessitates RWA‐aware factor models and integrated collateral strategies.

In short, tokenized Treasuries are becoming a foundational, yield‐bearing building block of the programmable financial stack — worthy of attention from trading desks, fintech founders, protocol designers, and risk teams.

Sources

• Provided article (text supplied by user)

• Tokenized U.S. Treasuries AUM — $10.0B, as of late Nov–early Dec 2025 across public and permissioned chains, evidencing scale and institutional product–market fit.
• Early 2023 baseline AUM — $10B by late 2025.
• Short‐dated U.S. Treasuries yield — 4–5% annualized, delivers attractive risk‐free carry that drives adoption of tokenized T‐Bills as programmable collateral.

• Bold label: Dual‐stack security and legal enforceability risk. Why it matters: With ~USD 10B in tokenized Treasuries now woven into DeFi collateral and fintech treasuries, failures in custodianship/legal claims or on‐chain exploits/oracles/governance can cascade across trading, lending, and payment rails. Opportunity: Providers of audited/verified contracts, insured custodial structures, and real‐time RWA monitoring/registries can become critical infrastructure for funds, protocols, and CSOs.

• Bold label: Fragmented liquidity and redemption mechanics. Why it matters: Divergent redemption windows, gates, minimums, and KYC whitelists create hard/soft/illiquid tiers, with potential NAV deviations under stress that impair collateral, leverage, and treasury operations across venues. Opportunity: Market makers and quants can monetize NAV–price and cross‐venue spreads, while fintechs offering liquidity management and redemption routing can win enterprise wallets and DAOs.

• Bold label: Known unknown — stress behavior and regulatory trajectory. Why it matters: The on‐/off‐chain performance of T‐Bill tokens under market stress and evolving jurisdiction‐specific rules remains unproven at $10B+ scale, affecting decisions to hold “cash” as 4–5% T‐Bill tokens versus bank accounts and the use of these assets as programmable collateral. Opportunity: Teams that build robust stress‐testing, compliance mapping, and adaptive treasury policies can capture share as standard‐setters for institutional RWA adoption.

Depending on where you sit, tokenized U.S. Treasuries crossing $10B AUM either confirms a new on‐chain base layer or remains a well‐packaged niche. Supporters point to 4–5% risk‐free yield, brand‐name issuers, and the ability to park, pledge, and compose T‐Bill exposure across DeFi and fintech. Skeptics note the fine print: not systemically large yet; dual‐stack failure modes from custodians and contracts; uneven redemption gates, whitelists, and KYC; and the very real possibility that on‐chain liquidity evaporates or NAV dislocates under stress. The trading crowd sees persistent basis and arbitrage around NAV, implied yield, and liquidity premia; compliance leaders see new AML triggers and transfer restrictions baked into tokens. Provocation for any treasury desk still sitting in idle stablecoins: in a higher‐for‐longer world, “cash” that doesn’t earn is an operating mistake.

Here’s the twist the data supports: the safest instrument in finance is becoming crypto’s most important piece of infrastructure, and the quiet breakthrough is its boring reliability. As tokenized Treasuries turn into yield‐bearing building blocks, the edge shifts from hype to operations—integrating them as collateral and reserves, building RWA‐aware models, and monitoring mint/burns, holder flows, and liquidity tiers with fixed‐income rigor. Watch for rotations between stablecoins, T‐Bill tokens, and leveraged yield products; the convergence of on‐chain analytics with RWA registries; and how protocols cap, circuit‐break, and document emergency procedures. If this stack proves itself under stress, fintech rails, DAOs, and quant desks will treat T‐Bills as first‐class code. The base layer now pays interest.