Circle plans to bring $900M money market fund under DABA license

Circle, the creator of stablecoin USDC (USDC), announced on March 13 plans to bring its Hashnote Tokenized Money Market Fund (TMMF) under Bermuda regulatory oversight through the company’s existing Digital Assets Business Act (DABA) license.

Hashnote, which Circle acquired in January 2025, is the issuer of USDY, the largest tokenized treasury and money market fund with a total value locked (TVL) of $900 million, according to DefiLlama. The fund’s TVL has fallen from $1.9 billion as of Jan. 7.

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According to the announcement, Circle intends to fully integrate USDY with USDC, which would allow for access between the TMMF and the stablecoin. The company believes that this will make USDY “the preferred form” of yield-bearing collateral on crypto exchanges, including for custodians and brokers.

According to Freeman Law, Bermuda enacted one of the first legal and regulatory frameworks for governing digital assets. Circle was the first firm in crypto to receive a license under the Bermuda Monetary Authority in September 2021. Bermuda’s Digital Assets Business Act currently permits three types of licenses for companies conducting business under the Act.

Tokenized RWAs a “$30-trillion opportunity”

In August 2024, Colin Butler, Polygon’s head of institutional capital, said that tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) are a $30-trillion market opportunity globally. He believed that the push would likely come from high-net-worth individuals who will allocate money to alternative assets as tokenization creates liquidity in previously illiquid markets.

Also, in August 2024, it was predicted that tokenized US Treasurys would surpass a $3 billion market capitalization by the end of 2024. According to RWA.xyz, the tokenized US Treasurys market cap sits at $4.2 billion at the time of this writing. Hashnote is the No. 2 protocol for tokenized US Treasurys, according to the platform, although its market cap has fallen 21% in the past 30 days.

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The overall market cap for RWAs surpassed $15.2 billion at the end of 2024, driven largely by institutional players who piloted tokenization projects related to a host of real-world goods, including real estate, gold, diamonds and carbon credits. The market cap initially reclaimed an all-time high of $17.1 billion on Feb. 3 but has since gone even further, rising to $18.1 billion at the time of this writing.

Tokenization is changing different areas of finance, including creating liquidity for illiquid assets and leveraging the blockchain to facilitate transparent and efficient transactions. It isn’t limited to a single type of asset, which gives the technology broader use cases.

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