The Collateral Problem: What Tokenized Treasuries Actually Back

What the token represents

A tokenized treasury is a claim, not a bill. The chain settles the transfer of the claim; a custodian, transfer agent, or fund administrator settles the promise behind it. Every rail we reviewed collapses those two layers in its marketing material.

We read the offering documents for fourteen issuance programs and mapped each to the entity that legally holds the securities. In six cases, the holder is an unnamed banking partner disclosed only as a category.

Where redemption actually clears

Redemption cadence is the most under-priced variable in the category. Programs advertising same-day liquidity often mean same-business-day instruction, with settlement landing two to five days later through a conventional account.

Secondary depth does not substitute for redemption. In stressed windows, on-chain quotes widened faster than the underlying bill market in every episode we sampled.

What credible disclosure looks like

Four programs publish a daily holdings file, name the custodian, and reconcile on-chain supply to the securities register. That combination — not yield — is the durable differentiator.