$16.2 billion, double-digit yields, and debt

Tokenised US Treasury funds on chain reached a record market value of $16.2 billion. They have grown 77% since the start of this year.

Treasuries are a quiet asset by nature. The government pays a fixed coupon and returns the principal at maturity, and there is no excitement in the price. When the on-chain balance of an asset like that nearly doubles in a little over six months, people did not come to own Treasuries. They came to do something with them.

How a 3-percent asset pays double digits

The original post says that repeating this automatically on venues such as Jupiter can push annualised yields above 10%. What short-dated US Treasuries actually pay is nowhere near that. The three-month Treasury bill rate published by the St. Louis Fed stood at 3.6% in the middle of May. Buying the same asset again with borrowed money and pledging it once more, a repetition usually called looping, fills the gap. Each turn enlarges the principal that earns interest, and the same Treasury gets counted as collateral twice or three times. Margin lending in equities and the bond repo market already work this way; what is new is that code, not a person, runs the loop.

In March the ranking flipped

Tokenized treasuries are becoming DeFi's collateral layer (FinanceFeeds, 2026-05-22)

출처: financefeeds.com

FinanceFeeds reports that the ranking flipped once Circle put its product on Binance's collateral rails. The explanation offered is not that the product got better but that it was accepted as collateral in more places. The same article records that FINRA on 4 May gave Securitize the first clearance to custody tokenised securities and settle them against stablecoins on the spot.

The double digits spinning on Jupiter

What sets the character of this market is that when collateral loses value, the seller is code rather than a person. The line to watch is the rate paid to borrow stablecoins. While that rate sits below the Treasury coupon the loop turns, and the moment it rises above the coupon every turn adds a loss. The original diagnosis, that Treasuries are becoming the base of on-chain finance, is right. What still has to be counted separately is whether the thing at the base is the Treasury or the debt built on top of it.