BlackRock's USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, ticker BUIDL, has climbed back to about $2.8 billion of assets and reclaimed first place among tokenized U.S. Treasury products. Token Terminal data put that stack at roughly 18.5% of a $15.1 billion category. Circle's USYC, built on the Hashnote book Circle bought in 2025, had taken the top spot in March after growing from about $600 million toward $3 billion. USYC was still near $2.9 billion in late August when BUIDL sat closer to $2.7 billion. The order flipped again as August closed. Some desks now print the whole tokenized Treasury market nearer $16 billion as Franklin Templeton and Ondo keep adding share. First place is a headline. Sub-20% share is the structure. See when the complex first crossed $9 billion in August.
BUIDL launched in March 2024 as BlackRock's first tokenized fund. Securitize administers it across eight chains, including Ethereum, Solana, Aptos, and BNB Chain. Each token targets a $1 net asset value and accrues yield daily through a rebase, which is how a short-term Treasury and repo sleeve behaves like crypto collateral that can move on a weekend. That is the product allocators actually want when GENIUS-style rules squeeze yield on payment stablecoins. It is cash management, not a Bitcoin proxy. IBIT can lose $201 million in a session and BUIDL can still add assets. Those are different sleeves of the same firm.
Why the crown keeps changing hands
Circle can distribute USYC through the USDC stack. BlackRock can distribute BUIDL through the same pensions, RIAs, and dealer networks that already buy IBIT and ETHA. Neither moat is permanent. Securitize has used BUIDL servicing fees to support its own New York listing. DTCC has talked up a tokenization service aimed at October 2026 with bank names on the working group. When settlement plumbing is shared, fund-level share becomes a price and a tick-size fight, not a protocol war. A 100-basis-point gap in fee or distribution can move a billion dollars faster than a white paper.
What a $15 billion cash sleeve means for crypto
On-chain T-bills are the parking lot next to the casino. They do not need a 15 September CLARITY cloture vote to keep growing. They do need a funds rate. If Warsh hikes on 16 September, the yield on this sleeve rises with Treasuries. If he holds, the opportunity cost of idle USDC looks worse, not better, unless payment coins are allowed to pass that yield through. For now, BUIDL's lead is a ranking, not a monopoly. Watch whether USYC takes it back before the FOMC, not whether tokenized cash exists. It already does.