Ripple, a prominent payments network, announced plans to allocate $10 million to a tokenized version of U.S. Treasury bills (T-bills) on the XRP Ledger, marking the first time such an offering will be available on the platform. This initiative is part of a broader fund that Ripple intends to dedicate to tokenized T-bills provided by the tokenization platform OpenEden and other issuers.
According to a Thursday release, OpenEden will issue these short-term U.S. government debt instruments as TBILL tokens. The assets backing these tokens will be invested in short-dated U.S. Treasuries and reverse repurchase agreements (repos) collateralized by U.S. Treasuries. Repos are financial instruments where securities are sold with an agreement to repurchase them at a higher price on a specified future date.
The tokenization of real-world assets, including traditional financial securities, is an increasingly popular sector within the cryptocurrency industry. This process allows for the issuance, management, and distribution of assets in a more efficient manner than traditional off-chain methods. Notably, in March, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, launched its USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund on the Ethereum blockchain, backed by U.S. Treasury bills, repo agreements, and cash.
Ripple’s allocation is part of a larger fund aimed at supporting tokenized T-bills from OpenEden and other unspecified issuers. Specific dates for the fund’s allocation were not disclosed in the release.
The XRP Ledger (XRPL), an open-source blockchain platform, uses the cryptocurrency XRP to facilitate global financial transfers and currency exchanges. As of Thursday, more than $780 million worth of funds are locked in tokenized versions of U.S. Treasuries, according to tracking site rwa.xyz.
