Hashnote’s USYC Token Powers Usual’s Surge in DeFi Market
Hashnote’s USYC token has become a significant driver in the meteoric rise of the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Usual, whose USD0 stablecoin recently surpassed a $1 billion market cap within just a few months. This shift has made waves in the $3.4 billion tokenized Treasuries sector.
According to data from rwa.xyz, Hashnote’s USYC token has experienced explosive growth, seeing its market capitalization soar to over $1.2 billion—five times its size over the past three months. This surge has propelled USYC ahead of BlackRock’s BUIDL token, which had been the largest player in the market since April, with a market cap of $450 million.
The USYC token is associated with the Hashnote International Short Duration Yield Fund, which invests in reverse repo agreements on U.S. government-backed securities and Treasury bills held in custody at the Bank of New York Mellon, according to the company’s official website.
Hashnote’s rapid growth underscores the importance of connecting tokenized financial products with decentralized finance protocols. By allowing their tokens to be used in other DeFi applications—referred to as “composability”—Hashnote is tapping into the rising demand for yield-generating stablecoins backed by tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).
USYC’s success is intricately linked to Usual’s growth, particularly its USD0 stablecoin. Usual is aiming to compete with dominant centralized stablecoins like Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC by redistributing a portion of the revenue generated from backing assets back to USD0 holders. Currently, USYC is the primary backing asset for USD0, but Usual has plans to diversify its reserves by adding more RWAs in the future. Recently, Usual also incorporated Ethena’s USDtb stablecoin, which uses BUIDL as its reserve asset.
“The bull market has resulted in a massive influx into stablecoins, but the issue with the largest ones is they don’t offer yield or rewards to users,” said David Shuttleworth, partner at Anagram. “Users holding USDT or USDC also don’t get access to the protocol’s equity.”
“Usual’s value proposition is its model of redistributing yield and equity back to users,” he added.
In just a few months, the protocol has attracted $1.3 billion, with crypto investors drawn to on-chain yield opportunities. Another key factor in Usual’s growth was the listing and airdrop of its governance token (USUAL) on Binance. Since its listing, USUAL has surged by 50%, significantly outperforming the broader crypto market, according to CoinGecko data.
Earlier this year, BlackRock’s BUIDL also saw notable growth, driven by its use as the reserve asset in DeFi platform Ondo Finance’s yield-earning Ondo Short-Term US Government Treasuries (OUSG) token.
