The Setup
BUIDL—the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund—invests in T-bills, repo agreements, and cash. It maintains a $1 per token value. It pays daily dividends. The mechanics are standard money market fund operations, unremarkable by any traditional measure.
What's remarkable is what's building on top of it.
Ethena Labs, issuer of the synthetic dollar USDe, holds $1.29 billion in BUIDL. That's 90% of the reserves backing their newer stablecoin, USDtb. Ondo Finance's OUSG—$770 million in tokenized Treasury exposure—runs on BUIDL as primary backing. Ondo calls itself "the largest holder" of the fund.