BlackRock's BUIDL fund crossed $500 million in AUM, cementing its place as the largest on-chain money market fund. The milestone, three months since the last $100M leg, shows steady institutional demand for tokenized Treasuries.
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BlackRock's tokenized Treasury fund, BUIDL, passed $500 million in assets under management. The milestone, recorded on Ethereum's blockchain, makes it the largest on-chain money-market fund by a comfortable margin. BUIDL invests in short-term U.S. Treasuries and cash. Shares trade as ERC-20 tokens, settling 24/7 with yield that accrues daily.
The fund launched in March 2024 with $100 million from Securitize, the tokenization platform BlackRock partnered with. By September it had crossed $400 million. The latest $100 million leg took roughly three months. That is slower than the initial surge. It still points to steady institutional demand.
Many buyers are crypto-native firms. The largest on-chain holders include Ondo Finance, which uses BUIDL as backing for its own yield product, and the DAO treasuries behind Arbitrum and MakerDAO. These entities need a stable store of value that earns yield without leaving the blockchain. Traditional money-market funds cannot do that. Stablecoins like USDC offer no yield. BUIDL sits between them.
The growth is part of a broader shift toward regulated on-chain finance. Banks are moving in, too. The BNY-Circle deal showed how traditional custodians are building rails for tokenized assets. Stablecoin regulation is taking clearer shape. Yield-bearing alternatives like BUIDL could gain more adoption from institutions that want dollar-denominated assets on-chain without giving up yield. The Ethereum blockchain enables the tokenization.
BUIDL offers what stablecoins do not: a regulated, yield-bearing dollar asset on-chain. That puts pressure on stablecoin issuers to offer yield themselves. Circle and Tether have resisted doing so over regulatory concerns. BUIDL shows there is demand for the product.
The $500 million figure is still tiny compared to the $6 trillion U.S. money-market fund industry. The biggest obstacle is distribution. BUIDL is available only through authorized transfer agents, limiting it to accredited investors and institutions. BlackRock and Securitize are working on secondary-market liquidity. Daily trading volumes on decentralized exchanges remain below $1 million.
Yield matters. BUIDL's seven-day yield sits around 4.5%, roughly in line with short-term Treasury bills. If the Fed cuts rates, that yield will drop. The fund's appeal as a yield-bearing alternative to stablecoins would weaken. Some holders might rotate back into USDC or USDT. Those offer no yield but better liquidity.
The existence of a $500 million on-chain Treasury fund was hard to imagine three years ago. The infrastructure is being built. The next test is whether the fund can double again within a year. BlackRock and Securitize have not set a target. The on-chain data will show the answer first.
Prepared with AlphaScala research tooling and grounded in primary market data: live prices, fundamentals, SEC filings, hedge-fund holdings, and insider activity. Each story is checked against AlphaScala publishing rules before release. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.