One Wallet Holds 98% of Circle's Tokenized Treasury Fund. Since August It Has Redeemed US$932 Million.

Circle's USYC became the largest tokenized Treasury fund in January, a lead credited to exchanges accepting it as margin collateral. Its size has since followed one account. A single BNB Chain wallet holds 98.3% of the fund's tokens. It stopped subscribing on July 24, and since August 14 it has redeemed US$932 million.

USYC's lead over BUIDL was built on collateral rails

USYC passed BlackRock's BUIDL on January 22, 2026, with US$1.69 billion of assets against US$1.684 billion. CryptoSlate attributed the lead to distribution rather than brand: on July 24, 2025, Binance said its institutional clients could hold USYC as off-exchange collateral for derivatives, with redemption into USDC, four months before it added BUIDL. USYC accrues interest inside the token, so a trading firm can post it as margin and earn the Treasury yield without moving cash. That account of the fund's growth is correct. What the chain adds is how concentrated the growth was.

One wallet built the position in eleven months

The wallet received its first USYC on July 25, 2025, the day after Binance's announcement. Over the following twelve months it was issued 3.05 billion tokens in 128 subscriptions, at a pace of 511.8 million in the third quarter of 2025, 779.0 million in the fourth and 1.19 billion in the first quarter of 2026. Its balance peaked at 2.70 billion tokens on June 22, 2026. The wallet received its last new USYC, 39.8 million tokens, on July 24, 2026.

Since August the wallet has redeemed US$932 million

Between August 14 and November 12 the wallet redeemed 819.0 million tokens in 21 tranches, each a round number between 10 million and 75 million. Each tranche followed the same route. The tokens were burned on BNB Chain through Circle's cross-chain transfer protocol, minted on Ethereum to Circle's CrossChainTeller contract, and burned there in the same transaction, which paid USDC to the wallet's own address on Ethereum. The USDC received totals about US$932 million. The redemption price rose steadily from US$1.1340 to US$1.1432 over the period, consistent with ordinary interest accrual.

The redemptions left the fund rather than moving within it. USYC tokens outstanding fell from 2,651.1 million on August 13 to 1,786.1 million on November 13, a decline of 32.6%. USYC on Ethereum fell from 77.2 million to 31.2 million tokens over the same period, and the fund's Solana and Arc deployments hold almost nothing. No network gained supply. The wallet still holds 1,754.94 million tokens, about US$2.01 billion, which is 98.3% of the fund and effectively all USYC on BNB Chain.

What the chain does not show

The wallet is unlabelled. Its timing matches Binance's collateral programme, but the chain does not identify its owner, and it may hold USYC for one firm or for many clients through a custodian. The record also does not show why the wallet stopped subscribing in July. A collateral account shrinks when the margin it backs shrinks, when its owners prefer cash or another collateral asset, or when the yield on Treasuries falls relative to alternatives. The chain records the redemptions, not their cause.

Why it matters

Tokenized Treasury rankings are read as a contest for adoption between issuers. USYC's rise and its 32.6% decline since August were both, onchain, the decisions of one account. The same pattern appears elsewhere in the category: one wallet held 81.5% of WisdomTree's WTGXX before redeeming US$600 million in October, and BUIDL's holder of a quarter of the fund left entirely. For an allocator choosing a tokenized fund, a fund whose size depends on one holder's collateral needs can shrink by a third in a quarter without any change in its assets or its management.

The redemption mechanics held up. US$932 million left through Circle's cross-chain settlement in 21 transactions, each paid in USDC within a single Ethereum transaction, which is the near-instant exit that made the fund useful as collateral in the first place. The concentration cuts the other way for issuers and venues. A fund whose growth rests on one venue's collateral programme will rise and fall with that programme, and a category total that includes it will move with one account's margin. The open question is whether collateral demand spreads across more venues and holders as exchanges add tokenized funds, or whether the largest tokenized Treasury funds remain the balance sheets of one account at a time.