In March 2024, BlackRock launched its USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, better known as BUIDL. By May 2026, it held $2.5 billion in assets under management.
That figure is not a headline to dismiss. It represents one of the largest asset managers in the world committing real capital to on-chain infrastructure, not as a pilot or experiment, but as a live product attracting institutional allocation.
BUIDL is not alone. The on-chain tokenized real-world asset market, excluding stablecoins, crossed $32 billion in May 2026. Tokenized US Treasuries account for $12.88 billion of that figure. Franklin Templeton, JPMorgan, and Standard Chartered are all active. On May 8, 2026, BlackRock filed applications with the SEC for two additional tokenized fund structures.
This is no longer a crypto story. It is a settlement infrastructure story.
What Tokenized Treasuries Actually Are
A tokenized Treasury is a blockchain-based representation of ownership in an underlying government bond or money market fund. The asset itself, the bond, does not change. What changes is how ownership is recorded, transferred, and used as collateral.
In a traditional structure, US Treasury settlement operates on T+2. A trade executed today settles in two business days. During that window, capital is tied up, margin requirements apply, and counterparties carry exposure.
On-chain, that window collapses. BlackRock's BUIDL offers T+0 settlement with daily yield accrual. Assets can be transferred 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They can be posted as collateral in lending markets without leaving the blockchain. Smart contracts handle yield distribution automatically.
The operational differences are not cosmetic. For portfolio managers dealing with treasury operations, collateral management, or cross-border liquidity, these are structural improvements.
Why Institutions Are Moving There
Three factors are driving institutional adoption, and none of them are speculative.
The first is settlement efficiency. T+0 settlement reduces counterparty exposure windows and frees up working capital. For fund managers running short-duration strategies, this is meaningful.
The second is programmable collateral. Tokenized Treasuries can now serve as collateral in lending protocols. BlackRock, Standard Chartered, and OKX launched a framework in April 2026 allowing qualified investors to use BUIDL as trading collateral, creating a structure where a single asset simultaneously generates yield, supports collateral requirements, and enables market access.
The third is round-the-clock access. Traditional bond markets operate on business hours. On-chain infrastructure does not. For global institutions managing positions across time zones, this removes a structural constraint.
The Scale of What Is Being Built
The on-chain RWA market is not concentrated in one product or one issuer.
Tokenized US Treasuries represent approximately 40 percent of the total on-chain RWA market. Tokenized gold, private credit, and real estate make up the remainder. The fastest-growing new category is tokenized equities.
Industry analysts project the RWA tokenization market could reach $2 trillion by 2030. The gap between the current $32 billion and that figure is a measure of how early the infrastructure buildout remains, not a measure of speculation.
What This Signals for Bitcoin-Native Settlement
Most of the current on-chain RWA market operates on Ethereum and Ethereum-compatible chains. That reflects where smart contract infrastructure was most mature when adoption began.
As the market matures, institutions are beginning to ask a different question: for assets where settlement finality is non-negotiable (sovereign bonds, regulated funds, real estate) does the security model of the underlying chain matter?
Bitcoin-native infrastructure is being built to answer that question. Mintlayer is one of the protocols extending Bitcoin's settlement properties to tokenized asset issuance and transfer. The infrastructure buildout is early, but the direction is clear.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
Mintlayer is developing Bitcoin-native infrastructure for tokenized asset issuance and settlement. Mintlayer Web Services provides tokenization and settlement infrastructure for institutions and funds.
