In early 2026, the most important shift in crypto market structure isn’t a new chain or a new meme cycle—it’s the sudden premium on yield-bearing cash that can move like crypto. For years, stablecoins were the default “parking spot.” Now, with rates staying higher-for-longer, institutions are asking a sharper question: why hold idle stablecoins when you can hold regulated, short-duration U.S. government exposure that still behaves like collateral?

That’s the core lens Charlet Sanieoff uses to read this moment. The story isn’t “TradFi versus DeFi” anymore. It’s a re-architecture of liquidity: shifting from crypto-native cash substitutes into regulated, yield-producing instruments that can be pledged, rehypothecated (where allowed), and settled through on-chain workflows.

Charlet Sanieoff frames the change as a practical upgrade in how capital sits and moves. The winners in 2026 aren’t necessarily the loudest protocols—they’re the networks that make cash management and collateral operations simpler for institutions that already live inside policies, auditors, and regulator-defined boundaries.

Tokenized U.S. Treasuries and tokenized money market funds sit in the middle: familiar exposures, packaged to be compatible with modern trading and settlement demands. This is why the conversation has moved from “tokenization as narrative” to “tokenization as balance-sheet utility.”

One number keeps showing up in board decks and risk committee updates: tokenized U.S. Treasuries crossing roughly $10B+ in total market value. Charlet Sanieoff emphasizes that the figure can move day-to-day because the ecosystem mixes real-time on-chain supply data with fund flows, NAV changes, and product-specific mint/redemption mechanics. Depending on the dashboard methodology, the timestamp, and which products are included, totals can vary—yet the direction is the point: up and to the right.

For readers tracking the space, dashboards such as https://rwa.xyz are often used to monitor tokenized Treasury market totals, issuer composition, and growth. The practical takeaway: the “~$10B+” marker is less a final score and more a signal that tokenized cash-like assets have become large enough to matter operationally.

A tokenized Treasury fund (or tokenized money market fund) is a blockchain token that represents a share or claim on a regulated vehicle holding short-term U.S. Treasuries and/or cash-equivalent instruments (often including repo). Instead of holding traditional fund shares only in legacy account systems, eligible investors hold a token that reflects that interest.

• NAV tracking: The token is designed to track the fund’s net asset value (NAV), like a familiar fund share.
• Yield: The underlying portfolio generates yield from short-duration government instruments; that yield is typically reflected via NAV changes or distributions, depending on structure.
• Issuance/redemption: New tokens are minted when subscriptions occur, and tokens are burned (or redeemed) when investors exit—usually through regulated processes, not “anyone, anytime.”
• Eligibility: Many offerings are limited to accredited/qualified investors and use KYC/whitelisting. “On-chain” frequently means “digitally native rails,” not “permissionless access.”

Charlet Sanieoff’s simple rule: if it looks like a fund interest and behaves like a fund interest, institutions should assume it sits inside the securities/fund perimeter—because that compliance design is what makes major allocators comfortable using it as collateral.

The institutional motivation in 2026 is not ideological. It’s math and operations.

• Higher-for-longer rates: When short-term government yields are meaningful, “cash yield” stops being a rounding error. Idle stablecoins become harder to justify for treasury teams.
• Collateral efficiency: The goal is capital productivity—posting collateral while keeping it yield-bearing where the structure allows.
• Cleaner workflows: Institutions want improved recordkeeping, faster movement, and fewer manual steps—especially when markets operate across time zones and weekends.

This is why tokenized Treasuries became the flagship “real-world asset” category: they’re conservative enough for policy, liquid enough for treasury, and now increasingly connected to modern rails.

Charlet Sanieoff uses the phrase programmable collateral to explain what actually changed. The asset isn’t just tokenized for novelty; it’s tokenized so it can participate in automated, rules-based financial workflows.

• 24/7 potential movement: Tokens can move outside traditional market hours (subject to the product’s own transfer and compliance rules).
• Faster pledge and transfer: Collateral can be reassigned or pledged with fewer operational handoffs than legacy processes.
• Composable settlement workflows: Tokens can plug into settlement logic—sometimes mimicking DeFi UX, but commonly in permissioned or whitelisted environments.

The nuance matters: many of the most important implementations are designed for regulated participants, with transfer restrictions, approved counterparties, and explicit custody/administrator roles. That “permissioning” is not a drawback for the target user—it’s the reason these products can be used at scale.

Q1 and Q2 are when treasury and cash-management budgets get refreshed, counterparty limits are revisited, and year-start allocation decisions get socialized across investment, risk, and operations. Charlet Sanieoff notes this is exactly why tokenized Treasury and money market fund discussions are showing up in more meetings: they touch multiple mandates at once—yield, liquidity, collateral, and control.

In practical terms, institutions entering 2026 planning cycles are asking: can we keep cash conservative, keep it productive, and still make it mobile enough to support trading and settlement needs? Tokenized funds are increasingly being evaluated as the bridge between traditional cash management and always-on collateral mobility.

Up next (Part 2): the two breakout use cases that made this trend impossible to ignore—regulated tokenized funds touching DeFi-like liquidity rails, and tokenized money funds being used as off-exchange collateral for centralized trading venues.

Charlet Sanieoff tracks adoption by watching where tokenized Treasury and money market fund exposure stops being a dashboard metric and starts being used inside real trading and settlement workflows. In early 2026, two patterns are doing the heavy lifting: (1) regulated funds touching DeFi-like liquidity rails, and (2) exchange margin/collateral programs turning yield-bearing tokens into working capital.

Headlines around BlackRock’s tokenized Treasury fund (BUIDL), issued via Securitize, connecting to Uniswap-style infrastructure are easy to misread. Charlet Sanieoff’s interpretation is more precise: this isn’t “TradFi joined DeFi.” It’s regulated, permissioned liquidity using DeFi-like pipes as distribution and settlement infrastructure.

In other words, the innovation is not that the asset suddenly became permissionless. The innovation is that a familiar, conservative exposure gained a modern interface: on-chain settlement logic, programmable transfers, and the ability to integrate into venues and workflows that look like crypto—while still respecting investor eligibility, compliance gates, and recordkeeping requirements.

Charlet Sanieoff summarizes the operational delta in four buckets:

• Access: Access is still typically restricted—think KYC, whitelists, and eligibility checks. The key change is that once you’re inside the fence, the asset can move through more flexible rails.
• Transfer mechanics: Token transfers can be programmatic and near-real-time at the blockchain layer, but the product’s rules still govern who can receive, when transfers can occur, and how redemptions work.
• Transparency and recordkeeping: On-chain balances and movements improve auditability and reconciliation for many workflows, even if the issuer/administrator remains the source of truth for shareholder records and compliance controls.
• Permissioning still shapes reality: The “always-on” story is real at the rails level, yet practical usage remains shaped by transfer restrictions, approved counterparties, and issuer-defined processes.

This is why Charlet Sanieoff calls it an infrastructure story: the pipes get faster and more composable, but regulated design stays the feature that makes institutional participation possible.

The second breakout is even more directly tied to institutional demand: tokenized money market fund shares used as off-exchange collateral for centralized trading . Franklin Templeton’s BENJI (associated with its on-chain share class of the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, FOBXX) has been positioned for institutional workflows, including the ability for institutions to post it as off-exchange collateral for trading on Binance via Ceffu custody.

Charlet Sanieoff focuses on the “why” behind the structure: collateral is no longer just a safety deposit—it’s a balance-sheet asset that institutions want to keep productive. If the same posted collateral can earn a conservative yield (in the fund) while supporting margin needs (in the trading venue’s framework), the opportunity cost of trading operations drops.

From Charlet Sanieoff’s lens, exchanges and large venues pursue yield-bearing, regulated collateral for three pragmatic reasons:

• Margin efficiency: Institutions can keep more value in fewer buckets, reducing the need to maintain idle buffers that earn nothing.
• Counterparty-risk optics: “Off-exchange collateral” frameworks are designed to reassure participants that assets aren’t sitting directly on the exchange balance sheet. That risk reduction narrative matters in institutional onboarding.
• Capital productivity: Earning yield while posted as collateral is a clean, CFO-friendly upgrade—especially when rates remain a meaningful line item in 2026.

One anchor number Charlet Sanieoff uses for credibility: Franklin’s reported net assets for FOBXX/BENJI were around $766M as of 12/31/2025 (per fund reporting/product materials), showing this is not a tiny pilot-sized concept—it’s already operating at material scale.

With tokenized U.S. Treasuries hovering around the ~$10B+ mark (depending on the day and methodology), the discussion has moved from “will it exist?” to “who becomes the default building block?” Charlet Sanieoff highlights that competitors aren’t only fighting on yield; they’re fighting to be the easiest product to integrate into collateral, custody, and settlement networks.

Ondo’s OUSG is often cited in this context, with Ondo publicly framing leadership via TVL and rapid growth narratives—positioning itself as a go-to on-chain wrapper around short-term government exposure. The strategic bet across issuers is the same: win distribution, win integrations, and the asset becomes the standard unit of programmable cash for the venues that matter.

Because tokenized cash totals change quickly, Charlet Sanieoff triangulates data rather than relying on a single screenshot. The basic method:

• Issuer sources: fund pages, administrator reporting, and product disclosures for assets, eligibility, and mechanics.
• Dashboards: market-wide aggregators such as https://rwa.xyz for total market value, issuer breakdowns, and trendlines (useful because the ~$10B+ figure can fluctuate).
• Reputable publications: confirm integrations and institutional partnerships through established outlets before treating them as operational reality.

This is also how Charlet Sanieoff frames the broader context: tokenized real-world assets (excluding stablecoins) were already discussed in the tens of billions by end-2025/early-2026 across industry analysis—so tokenized Treasuries are not an isolated niche; they’re the lead wedge.

Charlet Sanieoff organizes the ecosystem into four roles, because real adoption happens when these groups connect:

• Asset managers/issuers: create regulated products (BUIDL, BENJI/FOBXX, OUSG-style exposures) with clear subscription/redemption processes.
• Crypto venues: provide the liquidity and trading context—DeFi-like infrastructure for settlement/distribution, and centralized exchanges for margin utility.
• Custodians and collateral agents: enable off-exchange collateral, segregation, and operational controls (the “trust layer” institutions demand).
• Plumbing incumbents: firms like BNY Mellon and Goldman Sachs building or supporting subscription/redemption rails and tokenized fund servicing—critical for scale, because most institutions won’t operationalize this without familiar-grade controls.

For Q1/Q2 2026 planning conversations, Charlet Sanieoff’s practical conclusion is simple: adoption accelerates when tokenized funds are not just “held,” but accepted —as margin, as collateral, and as a settlement-ready unit across multiple venues.

Charlet Sanieoff’s view is that skeptics are not “anti-innovation”—they’re often reacting to the gap between the 24/7 token narrative and the day-to-day reality of regulated fund operations. If you’re evaluating tokenized U.S. Treasuries or tokenized money market funds as collateral in 2026, you should assume constraints exist and price them into the decision.

• Eligibility and permissioning limits: many products are restricted to accredited/qualified investors and rely on KYC + whitelists. For most institutional users, that’s not a downside—it’s the gating mechanism that makes internal policy approval possible.
• Thin secondary liquidity: “on-chain” doesn’t automatically mean liquid. Bid/ask depth can be limited, and trading may rely on a small number of approved counterparties.
• Redemption windows and cutoffs: blockchain settlement can be continuous while subscriptions/redemptions are not. Cutoff times, settlement cycles, and administrator processes still shape when you can turn tokens back into cash.
• Transfer restrictions: some tokens can only move between approved wallets, custodians, or participants—great for control, but it changes how composable the asset is in practice.

Charlet Sanieoff’s bottom line: treat tokenized funds like “programmable wrappers around regulated plumbing.” The wrapper can be modern; the plumbing still has rules.

Programs that let institutions post yield-bearing collateral off-exchange can reduce direct exposure to an exchange balance sheet, but they also introduce a dependency stack. Charlet Sanieoff encourages readers to map the full chain of reliance: the issuer/fund vehicle, the tokenization platform, the custodian/collateral agent, and the settlement workflow that governs pledges and releases.

This is especially relevant when tokenized money market fund shares are used in exchange collateral programs (e.g., BENJI/FOBXX-style structures discussed in Part 2). The risk doesn’t disappear—it moves. The question becomes: which entity controls the asset at each step, under what legal agreements, with what operational SLAs?

Charlet Sanieoff repeatedly returns to one point: tokenized Treasury funds and tokenized money market funds generally behave like securities/fund interests, so compliance dictates architecture. Transfer agents, whitelists, identity checks, and restricted venues are not aesthetic choices; they’re what allow conservative institutions to treat these tokens as legitimate collateral rather than experimental crypto assets.

In early 2026, the market’s “so what” is that regulated design can now coexist with crypto-native rails. That combination is why tokenized Treasuries have been cited hovering around the ~$10B+ level (fluctuating by methodology and timing) on dashboards such as https://rwa.xyz.

Yield matters, but Charlet Sanieoff argues it’s rarely the decisive differentiator between high-quality short-duration products. The likely winners are the products that become the easiest unit of collateral across the most places. In practice, that means distribution and integrations can dominate:

• Venue coverage: acceptance for margin/collateral across exchanges, prime brokers, and permissioned-DeFi venues.
• Custody coverage: support at the custodians institutions already use.
• Operational certainty: clear redemption mechanics, published cutoffs, predictable settlement, and clean reconciliation.
• Compliance interoperability: onboarding that works with institutional KYC/AML and wallet controls without bespoke exceptions.

Put simply: the “default” tokenized T-bill product may be the one embedded in the most workflows, not the one advertising the most compelling headline APR.

• Total market value trend: not just the ~$10B+ milestone, but the slope and volatility of flows.
• Top issuers by market cap/TVL: who is consolidating share as integration counts rise.
• Holder counts and growth rates: whether adoption is broadening beyond a small set of whales and pilots.
• New collateral integrations: announcements are nice; production usage with clear mechanics is better.
• Liquidity depth: observable market-making support and the ability to exit without “special handling.”
• Redemption mechanics: cutoffs, settlement timing, fees, and any gating scenarios under stress.

Charlet Sanieoff suggests a simple evaluation checklist for Q1/Q2 2026 planning, when treasury policies and counterparty limits are typically refreshed:

• Structure: what exactly is the token (fund share/claim), and how does NAV/yield show up?
• Eligibility: who can hold it, and how hard is onboarding for your entity type?
• Custody model: self-custody vs qualified custodian; who controls transfers and corporate actions?
• Integration coverage: where can it be pledged today (not “soon”)?
• Liquidity terms: secondary liquidity expectations vs primary redemption processes and cutoffs.

Institutions that run this playbook tend to move faster because they’re not debating ideology—they’re validating operational fit.

Charlet Sanieoff’s big 2026 takeaway is that tokenized funds are becoming the bridge between two worlds that used to move at different speeds: traditional cash management (conservative, regulated, process-heavy) and always-on collateral mobility (programmable, auditable, integration-driven). If Part 1 established why “cash on-chain” is suddenly valuable, and Part 2 showed where it’s being used, Part 3 is the reality check that makes the trend durable: when constraints are explicit and designed-in, institutions can finally treat yield-bearing tokens as working collateral—not just a narrative.