There’s been a change of guard at the rankings of the $3.4 billion tokenized Treasuries market.
Asset manager Hashnote’s USYC token zoomed over $1.2 billion in market capitalization, growing five-fold in size over the past three months, rwa.xyz data shows. It has toppled the $450 million BUIDL, issued by asset management behemoth BlackRock and tokenization firm Securitize, which was the largest product by size since April.
Market Cap Shift
USYC is the token representation of the Hashnote International Short Duration Yield Fund, which, according to the company’s website, invests in reverse repo agreements on U.S. government-backed securities and Treasury bills held in custody at the Bank of New York Mellon.
Hashnote’s quick growth underscores the importance of interconnecting tokenized products with decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and presenting their tokens available as building blocks for other products — or composability, in crypto lingo — to scale and reach broader adoption. It also showcases crypto investors’ appetite for yield-generating stablecoins, which are increasingly backed by tokenized products.
DeFi’s Role
USYC, for example, has greatly benefited from the rapid ascent of the budding decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Usual and its real-world asset-backed, yield-generating stablecoin, USD0.
Usual is pursuing the market share of centralized stablecoins like Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC by redistributing a portion of revenues from its stablecoin’s backing assets to holders. USD0 is primarily backed by USYC currently, but the protocol aims to add more RWAs to reserves in the future. It has recently announced the addition of Ethena’s USDtb stablecoin, which is built on top of BUIDL.
Usual’s Governance Token
The protocol, and hence its USD0 stablecoin, has raked in $1.3 billion over the past few months as crypto investors chased on-chain yield opportunities. Another significant catalyst of growth was the protocol’s governance token (USUAL) airdrop and exchange listing on Wednesday. USUAL started trading on Binance on Wednesday, and vastly outperformed the shaky broader crypto market, appreciating some 50% since then, per CoinGecko data.
BlackRock’s BUIDL
BlackRock’s BUIDL also enjoyed rapid growth earlier this year, driven by DeFi platform Ondo Finance making the token the key reserve asset of its own yield-earning product, the Ondo Short-Term US Government Treasuries (OUSG) token.
Conclusion
The rapid growth of Hashnote’s USYC token and Usual’s governance token (USUAL) underscores the importance of interconnecting tokenized products with decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and presenting their tokens available as building blocks for other products. The success of these tokens also showcases crypto investors’ appetite for yield-generating stablecoins, which are increasingly backed by tokenized products.
FAQs
Q: What is Hashnote’s USYC token?
A: USYC is the token representation of the Hashnote International Short Duration Yield Fund, which invests in reverse repo agreements on U.S. government-backed securities and Treasury bills held in custody at the Bank of New York Mellon.
Q: What is Usual’s governance token (USUAL)?
A: USUAL is the governance token of the Usual protocol, which allows holders to participate in the decision-making process and receive a portion of the protocol’s revenue.
Q: What is the purpose of Usual’s USD0 stablecoin?
A: USD0 is a real-world asset-backed, yield-generating stablecoin that aims to redistribute a portion of its backing assets’ revenues to holders. It is primarily backed by USYC currently, but the protocol aims to add more RWAs to reserves in the future.
Q: How has Usual’s governance token (USUAL) performed?
A: USUAL started trading on Binance on Wednesday and has appreciated some 50% since then, per CoinGecko data.
