USDtb is a dollar-pegged stablecoin created by Ethena Labs and issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, with reserves invested almost entirely in BUIDL, BlackRock's tokenized US Treasury fund. It launched in December 2024, moved to Anchorage's federally regulated issuance platform in October 2025, and circulates at roughly $775 million as of early July 2026, per DeFiLlama.
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If USDC is a stablecoin backed by a portfolio of T-bills and cash that Circle manages, USDtb is a stablecoin backed by shares of someone else's T-bill fund. Holding it is one step removed from holding BUIDL itself: the token wraps exposure to a BlackRock money market product into a freely transferable dollar.
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That design made USDtb two things at once: a conventional payment stablecoin and the stability reserve inside Ethena's larger system, where it absorbs risk for the synthetic dollar USDe when market conditions turn. This article covers who issues USDtb, what backs it, how it differs from USDC and USDT, and where it actually gets used.
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USDtb is a US dollar stablecoin designed to hold a 1:1 peg through full reserve backing. Over 90% of its reserves sit in BlackRock's BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund, with the remainder in stablecoins and similar products. Ethena Labs created it in December 2024; Anchorage Digital Bank became its sole issuer in October 2025.
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The project's own site, usdtb.money, describes the token as "backed by high quality short duration treasury assets including BlackRock's BUIDL," and the launch coverage from The Block (December 16, 2024) specified that "BUIDL will account for over 90% of USDtb's overall reserves." Unlike Ethena's flagship USDe, which maintains its peg through delta-neutral derivatives positions, USDtb is boring on purpose: dollars in, Treasury exposure held, dollars out.
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The "tb" in the name is the tell: Treasury bills. USDtb belongs to the same family as other reserve-backed stablecoins covered in the stablecoin pillar, but its reserve construction, holding a tokenized fund rather than direct securities, made it the highest-profile experiment in stacking one tokenized asset inside another.
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Ethena Labs created USDtb in December 2024 in partnership with Securitize and continues to drive its distribution across the Ethena ecosystem. Anchorage Digital Bank, the first federally chartered crypto bank in the US, has been the token's sole issuer since October 14, 2025.
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Anchorage Digital Bank took control of the USDtb smart contract on October 14, 2025 and became its sole issuer. The move followed the GENIUS Act's July 2025 passage: Ethena Labs had launched USDtb offshore in December 2024, working with Securitize, the transfer agent that issues BUIDL, and the token moved onshore once a federal framework existed. Anchorage framed the transition this way:
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"The reserves supporting USDtb are almost entirely invested in BUIDL, BlackRock's market-leading tokenized U.S. Treasury fund... [This is] the first time a major stablecoin, with a market cap close to $2B, has moved to a new issuer," with Anchorage Digital Bank becoming "the sole issuer of USDtb." (Anchorage Digital, Oct 14, 2025)
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Anchorage positions USDtb as America's first federally regulated stablecoin issued from a federally chartered bank under the GENIUS Act framework, which sets parameters for issuance, reserves, and redemption. Whether "first" holds depends on how you count competing claims from state-regulated issuers, but the structural point stands: USDtb went from an offshore DeFi-native token to a bank-issued, federally supervised payment stablecoin without changing its ticker. How bank and nonbank issuance models differ after GENIUS is covered in bank vs non-bank stablecoins.
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USDtb reserves are held almost entirely in BUIDL, the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, which invests in cash, US Treasury bills, and repurchase agreements. BUIDL held roughly $3.1 billion in assets as of early July 2026. The remaining reserves, under 10%, sit in stablecoins and regulated tokenized Treasury products.
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BUIDL is a tokenized money market fund: per the USDtb site, BlackRock manages the portfolio, BNY Mellon serves as fund administrator and custodian, and Securitize handles tokenization and transfer agency. When USDtb mints, incoming dollars buy BUIDL shares; when it redeems, shares convert back. The fund pays daily yield to its holders, which accrues to the issuer-side structure rather than to USDtb holders, since the GENIUS Act prohibits paying interest on payment stablecoins.
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This construction has a real advantage over raw T-bill portfolios: BUIDL is itself onchain and transfers between whitelisted institutional wallets 24/7, so reserve operations avoid some of the settlement lag of traditional custody. In June 2026, Ethena Labs and BlackRock deepened the relationship further, adding USDe to BlackRock's Aladdin risk platform and creating a $100 million liquidity facility for BUIDL holders when traditional markets are closed, per Unchained.
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The layering also means USDtb's collateral chain runs three deep: token holder trusts the issuer, issuer holds a fund, fund holds the Treasuries. Each layer is regulated and disclosed, but it is more moving parts than USDC's direct reserve model. For how BUIDL compares with rival tokenized Treasury funds, see OUSG vs BUIDL vs USDY.
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USDtb, USDC, and USDT are all fully reserved dollar stablecoins, but they differ on issuer type, reserve construction, and scale. USDtb is bank-issued with reserves in a tokenized fund and about $775 million circulating; USDC and USDT are nonbank-issued with direct reserve portfolios and $73 billion and $184 billion in circulation respectively.
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Supply figures below come from DeFiLlama's stablecoin dashboard as of July 7, 2026:

The scale gap is the honest headline: USDtb is roughly one two-hundredth the size of USDT. Its significance is structural rather than volumetric, proving out the bank-issued, fund-backed model that the GENIUS Act made possible, and serving a specific job inside Ethena that neither USDC nor USDT was designed for. A broader ranking of issuers sits in top stablecoin issuers 2026.
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USDtb serves three main functions: exchange and margin collateral, a lendable asset in DeFi money markets including Aave, Morpho, Euler, and Fluid, and the stability backstop for Ethena's USDe, which rotates into USDtb when perpetual futures funding rates turn negative. Direct mint and redeem runs onchain, 24/7.
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The backstop role is the one that makes USDtb strategically interesting. USDe, Ethena's $4.4 billion synthetic dollar, earns yield from short perpetual futures positions. When funding rates go negative, those positions bleed money instead of earning it. In that scenario, Ethena closes hedges and parks backing assets in USDtb: as Ethena told The Block at launch, "the hedges would be closed and the BTC or whatever is replaced with USDtb" to reduce exposure to negative funding. USDtb is the shock absorber that lets USDe and sUSDe rotate out of loss-making hedges when derivatives markets turn hostile.
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Beyond Ethena's internal plumbing, usdtb.money lists the standard institutional stablecoin jobs: collateral on exchanges, deposits in money markets like Aave and Morpho, and margin for derivatives. The token also advertises a "unique direct mint and redeem mechanism that exists onchain & available on-demand for mint and redeem access 24/7," which matters for institutions that need to enter and exit size outside banking hours.
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USDtb circulates natively on Ethereum and Solana as of July 2026, per DeFiLlama, with Ethereum holding the large majority of supply. Cross-chain transfers use LayerZero's Omnichain Fungible Token standard, so the token can extend to additional networks without wrapped-asset bridges.
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The chain footprint is deliberately narrow compared with USDC's 20-plus networks. Ethereum is where Ethena's collateral operations and the major money markets live, and Solana adds the highest-throughput retail venue. Because USDtb uses LayerZero's OFT standard, moving supply between chains burns on the source and mints on the destination rather than locking tokens in a bridge contract, the same pattern used by USDT0 and other OFT assets. How that rail compares with Circle's CCTP and lock-and-mint bridges is mapped in Hyperlane vs CCTP vs LayerZero.
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For treasury teams, the practical question is venue coverage: USDtb is listed as collateral on major derivatives exchanges and integrated in Ethereum DeFi, but it is not yet a payments token with retail rails, and its liquidity concentrates where Ethena's ecosystem operates.
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No. USDtb and USDe are separate Ethena-ecosystem dollars with opposite designs. USDtb is a fully reserved stablecoin backed by Treasury assets through BUIDL, holding no derivatives. USDe is a synthetic dollar backed by crypto collateral hedged with short perpetual futures, generating yield but carrying funding-rate and exchange risk.
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The confusion is understandable because both trace back to Ethena Labs and both target $1.00. The practical differences: USDe's roughly $4.4 billion supply earns its holders staking yield through sUSDe, while USDtb pays nothing and exists to be maximally boring. USDe's peg depends on derivatives markets behaving; USDtb's peg depends on BlackRock's fund holding Treasuries. One is an engine, the other is a brake, and Ethena runs them as a pair, rotating between them as funding conditions change. The full mechanism is unpacked in Ethena USDe and sUSDe.
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USDtb's honest limitations: its supply has contracted sharply from its 2025 peak, its mint and redeem access is institutional rather than open, and its holders earn nothing while the reserves yield roughly Treasury rates. None of these are hidden, but none appear in the marketing either.
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Supply is going the wrong direction. USDtb crossed $1.4 billion in 2025 and Anchorage described a market cap "close to $2B" at the October 2025 transition. As of July 7, 2026 it circulates around $775 million. Some of that is Ethena rotating reserves as funding conditions improved, which is the token doing its job, but a stablecoin whose supply halves in nine months is not winning independent payment adoption.
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Access is gated. Direct mint and redeem runs through KYC-verified institutional counterparties of Anchorage and Ethena. Retail holders buy on secondary markets and rely on arbitrageurs to hold the peg, standard for institutional stablecoins, but a real difference from the self-serve redemption story the "24/7" framing suggests.
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The yield goes to the structure, not to you. BUIDL pays daily dividends; USDtb holders receive none of them, and the GENIUS Act prohibits interest on payment stablecoins. Holders wanting Treasury yield onchain must hold BUIDL itself (with its KYC gates) or accept different risk in yield-bearing alternatives, compared in tokenized treasuries vs yield stablecoins.
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USDtb adds one more regulated dollar to a market that already settles in USDC, USDT, USDG, PYUSD, and a lengthening list of bank-issued tokens. For platforms, the operational challenge is treating those as one fungible dollar balance across chains rather than a dozen separate assets.
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This is the layer Eco works at: Eco Routes orchestrates stablecoin transfers across rails such as CCTP, Hyperlane, and LayerZero, selecting the route by cost, speed, and finality, so an application can accept USDtb on Ethereum and settle a different stablecoin elsewhere without managing each corridor itself. The custody side of that institutional stack, including Anchorage's role, is covered in stablecoin custodians and orchestrators.
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Facts verified against primary sources in July 2026: usdtb.money, Anchorage Digital's issuance announcement (Oct 14, 2025), The Block's launch report (Dec 16, 2024), Unchained (Jun 2026), and DeFiLlama supply data (Jul 7, 2026). Supply and reserve figures move daily and are labeled with as-of dates. USDtb is not a deposit, is not FDIC insured, and nothing here is investment advice.
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