Taking Treasury Bills Onchain with Martin Carrica

Tokenized U.S. Treasury bills represent the next evolution of stablecoins, bridging the gap between the risk-free rate of government debt and decentralized finance. While current stablecoins like USDC effectively function as wrappers for treasuries, they fail to pass the yield to holders, creating a massive opportunity cost for users. Martin Carrica, founder of Mountain Protocol, explains that by issuing yield-bearing, ERC-20 compliant tokens, providers can offer a direct, permissionless pipe for global users to access U.S. government yield. Although regulatory hurdles currently restrict U.S. citizens from accessing these products, the global demand for dollar-denominated, yield-bearing assets is projected to reach a trillion-dollar market. This shift threatens to cannibalize traditional banking deposits, as rational actors increasingly move liquidity toward instruments that offer higher returns and greater transparency than legacy savings accounts.