Today in crypto: BlackRock’s first tokenized money market fund has distributed $100 million in cumulative dividends since launching. Meanwhile, China’s central bank plans to allow banks to pay interest on digital yuan wallets starting Jan. 1, 2026, and most crypto treasury firms could fade out next year.
BlackRock’s BUIDL hits $100M in payouts, showing tokenized finance at scale
BlackRock’s first tokenized money market fund has paid out $100 million in cumulative dividends since its launch, highlighting the growing real-world use of tokenized securities amid rising institutional adoption.
The milestone for the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) was announced Monday by Securitize, which serves as the fund’s issuer and tokenization partner, overseeing onchain issuance and investor onboarding.
Launched in March 2024, BUIDL was initially issued on the Ethereum blockchain. The fund invests in short-term, US dollar–denominated assets, including US Treasury bills, repurchase agreements and cash equivalents, offering institutional investors a blockchain-based vehicle to earn yield while maintaining liquidity.
Investors purchase BUIDL tokens pegged to the U.S. dollar and receive dividend distributions directly onchain, reflecting income generated from the underlying assets.
Since its debut on Ethereum, BUIDL has expanded to six additional blockchains, including Solana, Aptos, Avalanche and Optimism.
The $100 million milestone is notable because it represents lifetime payouts derived from actual Treasury yields distributed to holders of onchain fund tokens. It demonstrates that tokenized securities can operate at scale while mirroring the core functions of traditional financial products.
The development also underscores the operational efficiencies enabled by blockchain technology, including faster settlement, transparent ownership records and programmable distributions, features that are increasingly drawing interest from large asset managers and institutional investors exploring tokenized real-world assets.
BUIDL, in particular, has seen strong adoption, with the value of the tokenized fund surpassing $2 billion earlier this year.
China to let banks pay interest on digital yuan wallets from January 2026
China’s central bank is rolling out a new framework for the digital yuan that will allow commercial banks to pay interest on e-CNY wallet balances starting Jan. 1, 2026, a move officials say will push the central bank digital currency (CBDC) beyond its original role as a cash substitute.
The new CBDC framework will allow banks to treat the digital yuan as part of their asset-liability operations, Lu Lei, a deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, wrote in a PBOC-affiliated China Financial Times article published on Monday.
“The digital RMB will move from the digital cash era to the digital deposit currency (Digital Deposit Money) era,” said Lei in the report. “It has the functions of monetary value scale, value storage, and cross-border payment.”
While cryptocurrency transactions and stablecoins are banned in Mainland China, the PBOC continues developing its CBDC framework, seeking to utilize the efficiency of blockchain rails through a central-bank-issued digital cash alternative.
Most crypto treasuries “will disappear” next year, execs say
Digital asset treasury companies face a grim future heading into 2026, with shares in many of the largest players sharply down, industry executives say.
“Going into the next year, I think that the outlook for DATs is looking a bit bleak,” Altan Tutar, co-founder and CEO of crypto yield platform MoreMarkets, told Cointelegraph.
Large numbers of crypto treasury companies emerged in 2025 to give Wall Street investors another avenue to access cryptocurrencies. The share prices of many initially shot up as heavyweight investors poured in billions as Bitcoin (BTC) rose to a peak in October, but a broad crypto market decline has since hurt their valuations.
With the market increasingly crowded, Tutar predicted the herd will thin out dramatically.
“Most Bitcoin treasury companies will disappear with the rest of the DATs,” he predicted.
Tutar said crypto treasuries focused on altcoins “will be the first to go” as they won’t be able to sustain their company’s market value above the value of their crypto holdings, a key metric to investors called mNAV.
“I suspect that the flagship DATs for large assets like Ethereum, Solana, and XRP will follow that way pretty quickly too,” he said.