Tokenized Money Market Funds: Three Funds, Three Businesses

Line up the three best-known tokenized money market funds by size and they look like siblings. Look at who actually holds them and they are three different businesses. One is a handful of institutions parking cash. One is exchange collateral concentrated in a few wallets. One is a retail-facing product spread across thousands of addresses. Same wrapper, same underlying assets (short-dated Treasuries and repo), completely different demand.

A tokenized money market fund is a regulated fund holding cash-equivalent assets, typically US Treasury bills and overnight repurchase agreements, where fund shares are issued and transferred as blockchain tokens instead of book entries at a transfer agent. According to Allium's crosschain RWA dataset (as of September 3, 2026), tokenized Treasuries and money market funds represent $17.3B of the $32.3B in total real-world assets tokenized onchain, making them the single largest RWA category by a wide margin.

Key takeaways

• Tokenized money market funds hold cash-equivalent assets (Treasury bills, repo) and issue fund shares as onchain tokens, giving investors near-real-time settlement and programmable transfer.
• They are the largest onchain RWA category at $17.3B, per Allium's dataset, part of a $32.3B total that grew roughly 171% over the trailing year.
• Funds of similar size can serve completely different demand. Institutional treasury products, exchange collateral, and retail distribution produce very different holder counts, position sizes and chain footprints.
• AUM alone tells you almost nothing about a fund. Holder concentration, chain distribution and whether the token is used as DeFi collateral tell you what the fund is for.
• Comparing funds across chains requires that the same on-token activity resolve to the same fields, which is a data normalization problem before it is an analysis problem.

Why one category now dominates onchain RWAs

The appeal is boring in the best way. A tokenized money market fund pays a yield close to the short-term Treasury rate, settles onchain in minutes rather than the T+1 or T+2 of traditional fund subscriptions, and can move between wallets or into DeFi protocols without a redemption cycle. For a crypto-native treasury holding idle stablecoins, that combination of yield plus onchain mobility is the pitch.

That pitch has pulled in serious institutions. BlackRock's BUIDL fund, issued in partnership with Securitize, holds cash, US Treasury bills and repurchase agreements, and distributes dividends daily as new tokens. Circle's USYC is a tokenized share class connected to a short-duration Treasury fund and is positioned heavily as collateral for institutional and exchange use. Franklin Templeton's Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, whose onchain token is known as BENJI, is a registered 1940-Act money market fund with a retail-accessible app.

The spine: three funds, three businesses

Here is the argument worth remembering. If you rank tokenized money market funds only by AUM, you learn who raised the most. You learn nothing about who uses the fund or why. Three funds of comparable scale can have wildly different holder bases, and that difference is the whole story.

BUIDL is pure institutional. Per Securitize's product materials, the fund carries a high minimum investment and onboards qualified investors through a controlled allowlist. The onchain signature of that design is a modest number of holders with large average positions, concentrated on a small set of chains, moving infrequently. It behaves like a treasury instrument, not a trading chip.

USYC is exchange collateral. Circle positions USYC as collateral that can be posted against trading and settlement obligations. The onchain signature is concentration: a small number of large wallets (venues, market makers, and their custody arrangements) holding most of the supply, with balances that move when collateral is rebalanced rather than when an end investor buys or sells.

BENJI is a retail barbell. Franklin Templeton's fund is a registered money market fund distributed through an app, which produces a very different shape: a larger population of smaller holders alongside some institutional positions. The average position is lower, the holder count higher, and demand tracks retail behavior more than collateral mechanics.

What the wallet data reveals

The table below is the artifact worth bookmarking. The dimensions are what separate these products; the directional cells describe the shape each fund's design produces onchain. Exact per-fund figures shift daily and should be read from live data, so the cells describe structure, not a snapshot AUM.

Read across a single row and the point lands. Same underlying asset, three different demand curves. An investor screening for yield needs the AUM. An analyst, a risk desk, or a regulator needs the holder shape, because that is what determines how the fund behaves under stress.

How a tokenized money market fund works, step by step

1. Subscription. An eligible investor sends cash or stablecoins to the issuer or transfer agent. For allowlisted funds, the wallet must be approved first.
2. Share issuance. The transfer agent mints fund-share tokens to the investor's wallet, typically at a stable $1.00 reference value, on a supported chain.
3. Yield accrual. The fund earns interest on its Treasury and repo holdings. Some funds distribute yield as new tokens daily (BUIDL's model per Securitize); others accrue value into the token or a rebasing mechanism.
4. Transfer and use. Depending on the fund's controls, tokens can move between approved wallets or be posted as collateral in permissioned DeFi protocols.
5. Redemption. The investor returns tokens to the issuer, which burns them and returns cash or stablecoins. Onchain redemption can settle far faster than a traditional fund's T+1 cycle.

The concrete gains over a traditional fund share

• Faster settlement: capital is not locked for a business day or two waiting for a subscription or redemption to clear at the transfer agent. Onchain issuance and burn can complete in minutes.
• Mobility without redeeming: a holder can post fund shares as collateral or move them between approved wallets instead of redeeming to cash and re-subscribing, which avoids losing accrued yield during the gap.
• Continuous visibility: supply, holders and transfers are observable onchain, so a risk desk can see concentration building in near real time rather than waiting for a periodic statement.
• Programmable distribution: daily dividend tokens or rebasing balances update automatically, removing the manual reconciliation a traditional fund needs.

Why comparing these funds is a data problem first

The comparison above sounds simple until you try to build it from raw chain data. BUIDL, USYC and BENJI live on different chains, use different token standards, and represent yield in different ways: BUIDL mints daily dividend tokens, other funds rebase or accrue into price. A daily dividend mint and a rebase both mean "yield paid," but onchain they are two entirely different transaction types. To compare holder counts, average positions, velocity and collateral use across all three, every event has to resolve to the same fields: asset, issuer, holder, amount, USD value, and whether the transfer is a subscription, a dividend, a redemption, or a collateral movement. Get the classification wrong and a fund's daily dividend inflates its apparent trading velocity.

Allium normalizes those records across 150+ chains into standardized RWA tables, so a dividend mint on one fund and a rebase on another map to comparable fields instead of raw, chain-specific logs. That normalization is why the crosschain figures (the $17.3B tokenized Treasuries and money market fund total inside $32.3B of RWAs) can be stated as one number rather than a pile of incompatible per-chain exports. The RWA dataset documentation shows the schema. If you are building the holder-level view yourself, the mechanics of resolving a single fund across chains are covered in how to identify a tokenized fund across chains.

Risks and open questions

• Concentration risk: when most of a fund's supply sits in a few wallets (the USYC pattern), the behavior of one or two holders can dominate flows. AUM hides this; holder data does not.
• Redemption under stress: onchain redemption is fast when the issuer's off-chain cash operations are open. During a market event or outside banking hours, the token settles instantly but the cash leg may not.
• Regulatory framing: these are securities, and rules on custody, transfer restrictions and settlement are still being worked out. See our notes on 15c3-3 for tokenized securities and atomic settlement for tokenized securities.
• Collateral mechanics: using a fund token as DeFi or repo collateral introduces questions about liquidation, oracle pricing and legal enforceability that differ from stablecoin collateral. The tradeoffs are laid out in whether you can run a repo market on tokenized collateral.
• Comparability: different yield mechanics and token standards mean naive cross-fund dashboards can misclassify activity. The numbers are only as good as the classification behind them.

Frequently asked questions

What is a tokenized money market fund?

It is a regulated fund that holds cash-equivalent assets such as short-dated US Treasury bills and overnight repurchase agreements, where the fund shares are issued and transferred as blockchain tokens instead of traditional book entries. Investors earn a yield close to short-term rates and can settle subscriptions and redemptions onchain, often in minutes.

How large is the tokenized money market fund market?

According to Allium's crosschain RWA dataset as of September 3, 2026, tokenized Treasuries and money market funds account for $17.3B of the $32.3B in total real-world assets tokenized onchain. That makes it the largest RWA category, and total onchain RWAs grew roughly 171% over the trailing year from $11.9B.

How do BUIDL, USYC and BENJI differ?

They hold similar assets but serve different demand. BlackRock's BUIDL, per Securitize, is a high-minimum institutional cash product with few large holders. Circle's USYC is positioned as exchange and trading collateral, concentrated in a small number of large wallets. Franklin Templeton's BENJI is a registered money market fund distributed through an app, producing many smaller holders alongside some large ones.

Are tokenized money market funds securities?

Yes. These are regulated fund shares subject to securities rules on custody, transfer and settlement, even though the shares move as tokens. Issuers commonly restrict transfers to approved wallets, and areas such as broker-dealer custody under 15c3-3 and atomic settlement are still being defined.

Can tokenized money market fund shares be used as DeFi collateral?

Some can, within permissioned settings. Circle positions USYC specifically as collateral for institutional and exchange use, while institutional collateral use for other funds is still emerging. Using fund tokens as collateral raises questions about liquidation, oracle pricing and legal enforceability that differ from using stablecoins.

Why is AUM a poor way to compare these funds?

AUM tells you how much a fund raised, not how it is used. A fund's holder count, average position size, chain concentration, velocity and DeFi collateral use reveal whether it is institutional cash, exchange collateral or a retail product. Two funds with similar AUM can behave completely differently under stress, which is why holder-level data matters more than the headline number.