Robert Mitchnick (left), head of digital assets at BlackRock, and Michael Sonnenshein, COO at Securitize
Securitize
For years, crypto traders posting collateral on exchanges have faced a tough tradeoff: use stablecoins like USDC or tether, which are, well, stable but pay no yield, or roll the dice with volatile assets like bitcoin and ether, risking a double hit when markets turn south: losses on your trade and on the collateral backing it.
Collateral plays a critical role in crypto. It’s the security deposit behind leveraged bets, ensuring traders can cover their losses when things don’t go their way. But until now, the options were limited: stable but idle, or productive but unpredictable.
Now, there’s a third way.
BlackRock’s BUIDL, the asset manager’s first money market fund issued on a public blockchain in partnership with tokenization specialist Securitize, will become accepted as collateral on Crypto.com and Deribit, two of the industry’s largest exchanges. That means institutional and experienced traders of these platforms can now post a yield-bearing, blockchain-native version of U.S. Treasurys to back trades.
Because BUIDL is both less volatile and income-generating (it currently pays around 4.5% annually), exchanges can offer lower minimum collateral requirements, freeing up more capital for traders to deploy elsewhere.
“This is a major turning point,” says Michael Sonnenshein, COO at Securitize. “We’re really starting to see not just the emergence but a real solidification of tokenized securities becoming a challenger to stablecoins as the common denominator across the crypto ecosystem. They’re now becoming what we would consider programmable productive capital, as opposed to just a passive investment instrument used for yield or a safe place to park capital.”
Since its launch in March 2024, BUIDL has grown to $2.9 billion in assets. Its largest holders include Ondo Finance, which tokenizes real-world assets, and Ethena Labs, the creator of the USDe stablecoin.
Crypto.com, which says it serves over 140 million users globally, will make BUIDL available as collateral to institutional clients in select jurisdictions across its full suite of services, including spot, margin, derivatives, and OTC trading, according to President and COO Eric Anziani.
Deribit, the largest crypto options exchange with over $1.1 trillion in volume in 2024, will allow institutional clients to post BUIDL as collateral for futures and options trading, and make it available on its spot exchange. Historically, most of collateral on Deribit has been denominated in bitcoin.
“In the end, it boils down to choice and efficiency,” says the exchange’s CEO Luuk Strijers. “80-85% of our business is institutional, and we are getting more of these traditional firms that don’t necessarily hold a lot of crypto but hold a lot of dollars and don’t want to miss out on yield.”
The integration could also accelerate adoption across the industry. Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the U.S., is in the process of acquiring Deribit for $2.9 billion. So BUIDL could soon be available across Coinbase’s broader ecosystem, bringing tokenized Treasurys even deeper into the crypto trading stack.
