USYC is the tokenized money market fund originally built by Hashnote and now operated under Circle, which acquired Hashnote in January 2025. The fund holds short-term US Treasuries and overnight reverse repos, with the USYC token representing a share in that pool. As of mid-2026, USYC sits around $3B in assets under management per rwa.xyz, making it the largest tokenized US Treasury product onchain by AUM as of mid-2026. The token lives on Ethereum, Sui, and the Canton Network, with USDC redemption rails handled by Circle.
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This deep dive covers what USYC actually is, how it is structured, who can hold it, what role it plays inside Circle's stablecoin and RWA stack, and how it compares operationally to BUIDL, OUSG, and BENJI.
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USYC is the Hashnote International Short Duration Yield Fund Ltd. token, a permissioned share of a Cayman-domiciled fund that invests in US Treasuries and reverse repos. The token accrues yield via price appreciation. Circle bought Hashnote in January 2025 to make USYC the institutional yield leg next to USDC, with redemption flows that move between USYC and USDC inside Circle's infrastructure (see Circle's January 2025 acquisition announcement).
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The table compresses the structural facts an allocator usually asks first.
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USYC represents shares of an offshore feeder fund, not a registered US 1940 Act money market fund. That distinction matters. BUIDL, OUSG, and USYC are all institutional-grade tokenized treasury products, but each one sits in a different legal wrapper. USYC's Cayman-domiciled feeder is designed for qualified non-US investors and US qualified purchasers, which is why the token does not trade openly to retail wallets the way a stablecoin does.
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The fund's investment policy keeps the underlying pool concentrated in short-dated US Treasury bills and overnight reverse repos. That is intentionally narrow. The portfolio is designed to behave like cash, with very short duration and counterparty exposure limited to the Treasury market and bank repo counterparties. Net asset value moves daily as Treasury yields and repo rates accrue, and the USYC token price tracks that NAV. Holders do not receive a coupon. They see appreciation in the token's USD value.
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Circle announced the acquisition of Hashnote on January 21, 2025 (circle.com). The strategic logic is that Circle already runs USDC, the second-largest dollar stablecoin by circulation, and Hashnote owned USYC, one of the larger tokenized treasury fund tokens. Pairing them gives Circle a native yield-bearing instrument that institutional USDC holders can flip into and out of without leaving Circle's ecosystem.
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Operationally, that means USDC and USYC sit on the same balance sheet conceptually. An institutional treasury holding USDC can subscribe into USYC to capture money market yield, then redeem back to USDC when liquidity is needed for payments or settlement. Circle has publicly framed this as a 24/7 cash-and-yield pair for institutional users. The Canton Network deployment in particular targets traditional finance counterparties that want privacy-preserving settlement on a permissioned chain while still touching tokenized cash and tokenized treasuries.
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Each chain serves a different audience. Ethereum is the default settlement layer for institutional onchain treasury products and DeFi integrations. Sui is a high-throughput Move-based chain where USYC integrates with onchain venues and structured products that want a non-EVM environment. Canton is a privacy-preserving network used by traditional capital markets infrastructure, including parts of DTCC and major banks, where confidentiality at the transaction level matters more than open composability.
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Treating USYC as one product across three chains lets Circle meet institutions where they already operate. An EVM-native fund subscribes on Ethereum. A market-making desk plugged into Canton's privacy model settles on Canton. A Sui-native venue wiring tokenized collateral into derivatives sits on Sui. The fund is the same; the rails are different.
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All four products target the same demand (onchain dollar yield from US Treasuries) but pick different wrappers and distribution paths. The comparison is most useful at the wrapper level.

The decision tree is wrapper-first. If you need a US-registered 1940 Act fund, BENJI is the cleanest answer. If you want maximum institutional AUM signal and Securitize infrastructure, BUIDL leads. If you are inside Circle's USDC stack and want the tightest cash-to-yield round-trip, USYC fits. OUSG is the natural pick when an Ondo-issued token with multi-chain DeFi composability and a layered underlying structure is the requirement.
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Redemption flows from the token holder back to USD or USDC through Hashnote's subscription and redemption process, which is now integrated with Circle. The headline feature post-acquisition is the ability to convert USYC and USDC against each other inside Circle's infrastructure, subject to the fund's cut-off times and qualified investor terms. That is meaningfully different from a typical fund redemption that ends in a bank wire two business days later.
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For an institutional treasury team modeling liquidity, the practical answer is to read Hashnote's current offering documents and Circle's USYC product page. Disclosed redemption windows, minimums, and operational cutoffs change as the product matures. Press releases describe direction; offering documents describe rules.
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USYC is permissioned. Wallets must be onboarded through Hashnote's KYC and qualified investor screening before they can hold or transact. That keeps the holder base concentrated among institutional treasuries, asset managers, market makers, and crypto-native trading firms running cash management strategies. It also means USYC does not appear in permissionless DeFi the way an unrestricted stablecoin would. Where it shows up in DeFi-adjacent venues, it is inside whitelisted, institutional-only pools.
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Three categories dominate. First, fund risk: the underlying Treasury bill and reverse repo portfolio carries minimal credit risk but is not zero, and repo counterparties are part of the exposure picture. Second, issuer and operator risk: USYC's wrapper is a Cayman fund, so the legal claim runs through that vehicle rather than directly to the underlying securities. Third, infrastructure risk: smart contracts on Ethereum, Sui, and Canton, plus the Circle and Hashnote operational stack that handles subscription, redemption, and recordkeeping. None of these are unique to USYC; they apply to every tokenized money market product. The right answer is to read the offering documents and the most recent fund administrator and auditor reports before sizing.
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This deep dive draws on Circle's public announcements about the Hashnote acquisition, Hashnote's published fund description and disclosures, and rwa.xyz's market data for AUM and chain distribution. AUM, supported chains, and product mechanics change as Circle integrates USYC further into the USDC stack; verify current state on the issuer site before allocating.