Two Tokenized Treasury Funds Can Yield the Same — One Pays You by Climbing in Price, the Other by Quietly Minting You More Tokens.
Tokenized Treasury funds hold nearly the same assets and pay nearly the same yield — about 3.4% right now. But they split into two opposite designs for how that yield reaches you. In one, the token's price rises: USYC sits at $1.13, Ondo's USDY at $1.14, Invesco's fund at $11.16, and they climb a little every day. In the other, the price never moves off $1.00 — instead, new tokens appear in your wallet. BlackRock's BUIDL and Franklin's BENJI work this way. Same Treasuries, same return, but a different thing shows up on-chain — and a different set of tax and accounting questions comes with it.
- Tokenized Treasury funds split into two opposite designs for paying yield. In accumulating funds the token's price climbs as interest accrues — as of July 31, 2026, USYC is $1.13, Ondo's USDY $1.14, Spiko's EUTBL $1.20, Invesco's USTB $11.16, each rising roughly 3.3–3.6% annualized. The yield lives in the price, and stays unrealized until you sell.
- In rebasing funds the price never leaves $1.00; yield arrives as new tokens minted into the holder's wallet. BlackRock's BUIDL, WisdomTree's WTGXX, Franklin Templeton's BENJI and VanEck's VBILL work this way — their token supply grows even with no new investors, which is how the yield shows up on-chain. Same underlying Treasuries, opposite mechanic.
- The choice is invisible on a price chart but not on a tax form: a climbing price is an unrealized capital gain; freshly minted tokens are income as received. Of the tokenized Treasury funds we measure, about US$8.5 billion (10 funds) uses the accumulating design and about US$4.4 billion (4 funds) the rebasing one — a roughly two-to-one split, and how the market is actually built (July 2026).
Put two tokenized Treasury funds side by side and, on the surface, they look like the same product: each holds short-dated US government debt, each pays out the interest, each yields something close to 3.4% right now. Look at their tokens, though, and they behave nothing alike. One costs $1.00 and never moves. Another costs $116. A third sits at $1.13 and ticks up a hair every day. Those prices aren't telling you which fund is doing better. They're telling you something more basic that almost no chart or yield table makes explicit: how the fund hands you your yield.
There are two answers, and every tokenized Treasury fund picks one. In the first design — call it accumulating— the yield is baked into the token's price. The fund earns interest, its net asset value rises, and the token rises with it. You hold the same number of tokens; each one is worth a little more each day. Ondo's USDY reads $1.14 today; Invesco's USTB, $11.16; Circle's USYC, $1.13 — and all of them climb at roughly 3.3–3.5% a year. The high face values aren't performance; they're just where each fund set its starting share price. What matters is the drift: the price is the yield.
Fig. 1
In accumulating funds, the token price itself is the yield — it climbs a little every day.
Net asset value per token, rebased to 100 at the start of the window so funds with different share prices can be compared on one scale. Each line drifts upward at roughly 3.3–3.5% annualized — that upward drift IS the yield being paid. Read from each fund's on-chain NAV oracle; the levels differ only because each fund chose a different starting share price.
The second design — rebasing, or peg-and-distribute — does the opposite. The token is pinned to $1.00 and kept there. The yield doesn't go into the price; it comes to you as more tokens. BlackRock's BUIDL pays out monthly, minting new tokens into each holder's balance; Franklin Templeton's BENJI does it daily, and WisdomTree's WTGXX and VanEck's VBILL work the same way. If you held any of them and watched only the price, you'd think nothing was happening — the price is always a dollar. What moves is your balance, and the fund's total supply, which grows steadily even when no new money comes in. That growing supply, against a flat price, is the yield showing up on-chain.
Why the mechanism matters more than it looks
It would be easy to file this under trivia — two ways to reach the same number. But the mechanism is exactly the part that isn't interchangeable. A price that climbs is an unrealized gain: nothing is taxable until you sell, and your token count never changes. Freshly minted tokens are income the moment they land: taxable as received, and your balance changes constantly. For a treasurer marking positions, an auditor reconciling holdings, or a protocol using the token as collateral, those are different worlds. A lending market has to know whether a deposited token will grow in count or in price; an accounting system has to know whether to book a rising asset value or a stream of income events. The Treasuries underneath are identical; the wrapper is not.
It also changes what “the price” even reports. On an accumulating token, price is a live readout of the fund's value, and a stale or missing NAV oracle shows up immediately as a wrong price — which is why these funds are wired to on-chain price feeds. On a rebasing token, the price is fixed by design and tells you almost nothing; the information is in the supply and the distribution schedule instead. So two funds holding the same bills demand two entirely different ways of being read, valued, and trusted — and a viewer who only checks the ticker is reading one of them wrong.
One asset, two receipts
Neither design is better; they are answers to different needs. Accumulating suits a holder who wants a single token that quietly compounds and a clean capital-gains profile. Rebasing suits one who wants a stable $1.00 unit that behaves like cash on every screen and a visible income stream — useful wherever a token has to trade or post as collateral at par. What's worth noticing is simply that the choice exists, sits underneath every tokenized Treasury, and is invisible in the one number most people look at. As tokenized funds move toward trading venues and collateral rails, the question behind a fund's yield is no longer only how much — it is how it reaches you, and what that turns your holding into on the way.
NAV per token, July 31, 2026: USYC $1.1326, Ondo USDY $1.1412, Spiko EUTBL $1.2023, Janus Henderson JTRSY $1.1112, Invesco USTB $11.16, Ondo OUSG $116.06, OpenEden TBILL $1.1518 — each drifting up ~3.2–3.6% annualized over recent weeks, a figure stable across 14-, 30- and 60-day windows. Values read from each fund's on-chain NAV oracle; face-value differences reflect starting share price, not return. Ten funds use this design.
Verified Jul 31, 2026 · onchainbenchmark.com/research/coverageFour funds hold a $1.00 token and pay yield by minting new tokens — BlackRock's BUIDL (monthly), Franklin Templeton's BENJI (daily), WisdomTree's WTGXX and VanEck's VBILL (daily) — a design each issuer documents publicly. On-chain, their token supply grows steadily even absent new investors, the signature of yield paid as tokens rather than price. Combined, they hold about US$4.4 billion.
BlackRock / Franklin Templeton / WisdomTree / VanEck — fund documentationBoth designs wrap short-dated US Treasury exposure and currently yield close to 3.4% annualized. Of the tokenized Treasury funds we measure, roughly US$8.5 billion (10 funds) uses the accumulating design and about US$4.4 billion (4 funds) the rebasing one — a structural, roughly two-to-one split across US$12.8 billion, not a fringe distinction.
Verified Jul 31, 2026 · onchainbenchmark.com/methodology- How does a tokenized Treasury fund actually pay you yield?
- In one of two ways. Accumulating funds (such as USYC, Ondo's USDY, Spiko's EUTBL, Invesco's USTB — 10 funds, about $8.5 billion) let the token's net asset value climb, so the price rises a little each day and your gain is unrealized until you sell. Rebasing funds (BlackRock's BUIDL, WisdomTree's WTGXX, Franklin Templeton's BENJI, VanEck's VBILL — 4 funds, about $4.4 billion) keep the token pinned at $1.00 and pay yield by minting new tokens into your wallet. The underlying Treasuries and the ~3.4% yield are similar; only the mechanism differs.
- Why does BlackRock's BUIDL stay at $1.00 while Ondo's USDY is $1.14?
- Because they use different yield mechanisms. BUIDL is a rebasing fund: it holds the token at $1.00 by design and distributes yield as additional tokens, so the price never drifts. USDY is an accumulating fund: it lets the price rise with the fund's net asset value, so $1.14 reflects the yield earned since launch. Neither price is a measure of performance — they reflect design choices, not returns.
- Does the yield mechanism affect taxes or accounting?
- It can. A climbing token price is generally an unrealized gain — nothing is typically taxable until you sell, and your token count stays constant. Newly minted tokens from a rebasing fund are generally income as received — potentially taxable when they arrive, and your balance changes continually. Treatment depends on jurisdiction and your circumstances, but the two designs create different reporting profiles from the same underlying asset. This is a description, not tax advice.
- Is $116 for Invesco's USTB expensive compared with a $1.00 fund?
- No — the dollar figure is just the fund's share price, set by its chosen starting unit size, not a measure of value or performance. A $116 accumulating token and a $1.00 rebasing token can hold the same assets and yield the same. What differs is that the $116 token's price rises as yield accrues, while the $1.00 token's price stays fixed and the yield arrives as extra tokens.