The Largest Tokenized Treasury Fund Isn’t BlackRock’s Anymore — but Circle Didn’t Out-Raise It. It Out-Accumulated It.
By market value, Circle’s USYC has become the largest tokenized Treasury fund, at about US$2.98 billion, ahead of BlackRock’s BUIDL at about US$2.74 billion. Yet BlackRock still has more principal onchain: about 2.74 billion tokens to USYC’s 2.63 billion. USYC leads for a structural reason, not a fundraising one. It is an accumulating fund — its yield compounds into a rising token price, now about US$1.134 — while BUIDL pays its yield out and holds a flat US$1.00. The crown changed hands on how the two funds are built, not on which raised more money.
- By market value, Circle’s USYC is now the largest tokenized Treasury fund we measure — about US$2.98 billion — ahead of BlackRock’s BUIDL at about US$2.74 billion, a lead of roughly US$239 million (as of Aug 18, 2026). This runs against coverage still describing BUIDL as the category’s clear leader.
- The lead is structural, not a fundraising gap. USYC is an accumulating fund: its Treasury yield compounds into the token price, which has risen to about US$1.134. BUIDL distributes its yield and holds a flat US$1.00 price. Counted in principal — tokens outstanding — BlackRock is still larger, about 2.74 billion tokens to USYC’s 2.63 billion.
- USYC’s token price has risen almost without interruption — from about US$1.02 to US$1.134 across the price history we hold, declining on only one of roughly 960 daily readings. That steady upward drift is the whole mechanism: about 13% of accrued yield now sits inside the token, which is exactly the amount by which market value outruns principal.
- The divide runs through the whole category, almost evenly: of the roughly US$16.6 billion of tokenized Treasuries we measure, about US$9.2 billion (55%) sits in accumulating funds whose price drifts upward, and about US$7.5 billion (45%) in funds pinned to a dollar. The top of the leaderboard alternates between the two, so the ranking mixes numbers that don’t mean the same thing — a distinction that sharpens as these funds are increasingly used as collateral.
The largest tokenized Treasury fund is no longer BlackRock’s BUIDL. By market value, that title now belongs to USYC, the tokenized money-market fund Circle acquired from Hashnote — about US$2.98 billion to BUIDL’s US$2.74 billion. The gap is real, and it matches how the market ranks these funds. What it does not mean is that Circle raised more money than BlackRock. Count the principal that investors actually put in, and BlackRock is still the larger fund. USYC sits on top for a reason buried in how the two funds are built.
The two funds hold nearly the same thing — short-term US Treasuries and repo — and do the same job. They differ in what they do with the yield. BUIDL distributes it: holders receive the interest as new tokens, and each BUIDL token stays pinned to US$1.00. USYC accumulates it: nothing is paid out, and the yield instead compounds into the token’s price, which has risen to about US$1.134. Same underlying assets, two different containers — and the container is what separates the leaderboard.
Fig. 1
USYC keeps its yield inside the token; BUIDL pays it out and stays at a dollar.
Token price in US$, read daily. USYC’s price rises steadily as Treasury yield accrues into it — from about US$1.02 to US$1.134 across the history we hold — declining on only one of roughly 960 daily readings. BUIDL’s price holds flat at US$1.00 because it distributes its yield instead. The gap between the two lines is accumulated, undistributed interest — about 13% of USYC’s value today.
That difference is what puts USYC ahead. Its market value is its token count times its rising price: about 2.63 billion tokens at US$1.134. BUIDL’s is its token count times a flat dollar: about 2.74 billion tokens at US$1.00. So the fund with fewer tokens outstanding reports the larger market value — because roughly 13% of USYC’s headline figure is accrued yield sitting inside the token, not principal that arrived at the fund. Measured in principal, BlackRock still leads, by about 114 million tokens.
Why the same yield sits in two different places
Neither design is better; they answer to different holders. A distributing fund like BUIDL suits an investor who wants the income in hand — to sweep it, spend it, or account for it as it arrives — and who wants a token that always equals a dollar. An accumulating fund like USYC suits a holder who would rather let the interest compound untouched, and for whom a single rising number is simpler than a stream of payments to track. The same Treasury yield ends up in one of two places: paid out as more tokens, or folded into the price of the tokens already held.
The consequence shows up the moment you try to rank the funds. Market value — price times supply — is the standard yardstick, and by it USYC leads. But market value rewards the accumulating structure by construction, because it counts the retained yield as size. Principal — how many tokens exist — strips that out, and by it BlackRock leads. Both are true at once. The fund that is largest by the number the market usually quotes is not the one that took in the most money.
The gap also widens on its own. An accumulating fund’s market value climbs even if not a single new token is minted, simply because its price rises with accrued yield; a distributing fund has to attract new principal to grow its headline figure at all. So an accumulating fund can appear to be gaining on a distributing rival while the two are, in principal terms, holding steady — the ranking moving on structure rather than on flows. That is the mechanism behind USYC’s lead, and it will keep working in its favor for as long as the Treasuries earn.
The split runs through the whole category
USYC and BUIDL are not an isolated pair. The same divide runs through the entire US$16.6 billion of tokenized Treasuries we measure, and it falls almost evenly: about US$9.2 billion — 55% sits in funds whose price drifts upward as yield accrues, the accumulating model, and roughly US$7.5 billion — 45% sits in funds pinned to a dollar that pay their yield out. The two halves are close enough in size that neither is the convention; the market is being built in two incompatible shapes at once. And the top of the leaderboard alternates between them — USYC accumulating, BUIDL distributing, Ondo’s USDY accumulating, Franklin Templeton’s iBENJI pinned — so the ranking readers reach for is a mix of two numbers that do not mean the same thing.
That is manageable while these funds are mostly held for their yield, where a rising price is simply the yield showing up. It gets harder as the funds move into the role the market is now pushing them toward: collateral. Tokenized Treasuries are increasingly posted against loans, used as margin, and wrapped into other onchain products, and the two shapes do not behave the same in that role. A dollar-pinned token can be counted one-for-one against a dollar of exposure; a drifting one has to be re-priced every day, and any system that treats it as a flat dollar will slowly misstate what it holds. As the same Treasuries get pledged and re-pledged through more hands, the question stops being which fund is largest and becomes which shape a given venue was built to accept — and whether the two can sit in the same collateral pool at all.
Why this matters now
For now the tokenized-Treasury market is small enough, and its top four funds concentrated enough — about 58% of the total — that the accumulating and distributing camps still coexist without much friction. That is unlikely to hold. The clearest test of whether tokenized Treasuries become real financial infrastructure is whether they can be used as collateral at scale, and that is exactly where the two shapes stop being interchangeable. A market that standardizes will have to choose — or build the machinery to price both side by side — and the choice will decide which of today’s leaders keeps its place.
So the number at the top of the AUM table is the wrong one to watch. USYC leads BUIDL by about the width of the yield it has chosen to keep rather than pay out — a lead that widens a little every day the Treasuries earn, without a dollar of new money arriving. The figure that will decide this market is the one underneath: how much of each fund is principal that showed up, and how much is yield it is carrying in its price. As tokenized Treasuries move from something institutions hold to something they borrow against, the more useful question is not which fund is biggest today — it is which of the two shapes the next layer of onchain finance decides it can actually count on.
As of Aug 18, 2026: USYC ~US$2.98B (2.63B tokens × ~$1.134 NAV) leads BUIDL ~US$2.74B (2.74B tokens × $1.00). Both summed across every chain each fund is issued on, from the funds’ own contracts, valued at NAV. The tokenized-Treasury funds we measure total ~US$16.6B across 31 funds.
Verified Aug 18, 2026 · onchainbenchmark.com/instruments/usycCounted in tokens rather than dollars, BUIDL is larger: ~2.74B tokens to USYC’s ~2.63B. USYC’s market-value lead is the ~13% of accrued yield capitalized into its price. Both funds’ token supplies read directly from their onchain contracts (6 decimals, verified).
Verified Aug 18, 2026 · onchainbenchmark.com/instruments/buidlOf the ~US$16.6B of tokenized Treasuries we measure, ~US$9.2B (55%, 16 funds) sits in accumulating funds whose NAV drifts upward as yield accrues; ~US$7.5B (45%, 15 funds) sits in funds pinned to ~US$1.00 that distribute or hold a flat peg. The two models are close enough in size that neither is the category convention, and the four largest funds alternate between them (USYC and USDY accumulating; BUIDL and iBENJI flat).
Verified Aug 18, 2026 · onchainbenchmark.com/reportsUSYC accrues yield into its token price rather than paying a coupon — its price has risen to ~US$1.134, declining on only one of ~960 daily readings we hold. BUIDL distributes its yield onchain and holds a flat US$1.00. Both structures are confirmed by the issuers’ own documentation.
rwa.xyz — USYC- Is USYC really the largest tokenized Treasury fund now?
- By market value — outstanding supply times net asset value — yes. As of Aug 18, 2026, USYC is about US$2.98 billion, ahead of BlackRock’s BUIDL at about US$2.74 billion, a lead of roughly US$239 million. This is the standard way funds are ranked and matches independent trackers. Measured instead by principal — tokens outstanding — BUIDL is still larger, so the answer depends on which yardstick you use.
- What does it mean that USYC “out-accumulated” BUIDL rather than out-raising it?
- USYC is an accumulating fund: it does not pay its Treasury yield out, so the yield compounds into the token’s price, which has risen to about US$1.134. About 13% of USYC’s market value is therefore accrued yield held inside the token, not new principal. BUIDL distributes its yield and keeps a flat US$1.00 price. Because market value counts that retained yield as size, USYC can lead on market value while BUIDL holds more tokens — about 2.74 billion to USYC’s 2.63 billion.
- Why does a token’s price rise for USYC but not for BUIDL?
- It is a design choice about what to do with yield. An accumulating fund like USYC keeps the interest inside the token, so the price drifts upward as it compounds. A distributing fund like BUIDL pays the interest out as additional tokens, so each token stays pinned to a dollar. Both hold the same kind of short-term Treasuries; they differ only in where the yield lands.
- How much of the tokenized Treasury market is accumulating versus distributing?
- It is split almost evenly. Of the roughly US$16.6 billion of tokenized Treasuries we measure (as of Aug 18, 2026), about US$9.2 billion — 55%, across 16 funds — sits in accumulating funds whose token price drifts upward as yield accrues, and about US$7.5 billion — 45%, across 15 funds — sits in funds pinned to about US$1.00 that distribute their yield or hold a flat peg. Because neither model dominates, and the largest funds alternate between the two, a market-value ranking mixes two kinds of number that do not mean the same thing.
- Does the accumulating vs distributing difference matter beyond ranking the funds?
- Yes, particularly as tokenized Treasuries are used as collateral. A distributing token pinned to US$1.00 behaves like cash and can be counted one-for-one against a dollar. An accumulating token whose price rises must be marked to its current value, more like a share. Systems that lend against or wrap these tokens have to handle the two differently, even when the underlying Treasuries are identical.