Tokenized U.S. Treasury Market Grows Nearly 600% to $698M as Crypto's RWA Race Intensifies

Tokenized versions of U.S. Treasuries grew nearly seven-fold so far in 2023 as competition between investment offerings and blockchain venues intensified.

According to real-world asset (RWA) monitoring platform RWA.xyz, the tokenized Treasury market surged to $698 million as of Monday from around $100 million at the start of the year. The expansion was spurred by new entrants into the space as well as from existing platform growth, Charlie You, co-founder of RWA.xyz, noted in the Our Network newsletter.

Existing protocols including Ondo Finance, Maple and Backed enjoyed a sizable increase over the past few months, RWA data shows. Meanwhile, new protocols launched just in September such as Tradeteq and TrueFi's Adatp3r offering attracted $4.5 million and $8.5 million deposits, respectively.

Ethereum (ETH) has recently toppled the Stellar (XLM) network in value of Treasury tokens on-chain, while later entrants Polygon (MATIC) and Solana (SOL) also attracted over $40 million of assets combined, according to blockchain data. This indicates "a diversifying blockchain landscape for tokenized assets," RWA.xyz's You said.

Permissionless yield-bearing stablecoin alternatives emerged as a fresh avenue for tokenization, You added, as Ondo Finance debuted its USDY token and Mountain Protocol unveiled USDM. These offerings differ from leading stablecoins – Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC – in that they directly pass on the yield earned from the backing assets.

Tokenization of Treasuries was spearheaded the effort to put real-world assets to blockchain rails. Crypto investors seek these offerings in order to capture higher returns as global interest rates soar alongside declining decentralized finance yields. Investment firm 21.co forecasted that the market for tokenized assets could grow to $10 trillion by the end of the decade.