The U.S. Department of the Treasury meeting discussed the impact of tokenization and stablecoins on the growing demand for short-term T-bills, as well as the prospect of launching a government blockchain network.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury website published the minutes of the October 29, 2024 meeting of the Borrowing Advisory Committee. During the discussion, officials noted the potential benefits of introducing stablecoins and tokenizing Treasury bills.
Committee participants claimed that stablecoins would increase demand for U.S. T-bills, as a significant portion of their collateral consists of short-dated Treasury securities issued by the Treasury.
Despite certain risks to financial stability, tokenization of T-bills could help improve operations and innovation in the T-bill market. One of the committee members even suggested the creation of a regulated permissioned blockchain for tokenizing Treasury securities, the management of which would be entrusted to a government entity.
Tokenization of U.S. T-bills by private structures in 2024 is picking up steam. In early August, it became known that OpenEden will issue tokenized securities on XRP Ledger. Later that month, Franklin Templeton issued tokenized U.S. Treasuries based on L2 protocol Arbitrum in the Ethereum ecosystem.
