--- title: "Superstate" author: Mariusz Szyma date: 2026-09-24 lang: en canonical: https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/superstate/ series: "Companies in stablecoins and RWA" series_part: 4/26 series_url: https://szyma.co/en/blog/companies/ data_as_of: Sep 2026 --- # Superstate Superstate is a San Francisco company, founded by Compound's Robert Leshner, that started as a manager of tokenized funds and is turning into a transfer agent and issuance venue for tokenized shares. It matters because its path shows how hard it is for an independent issuer to live on Treasury fees, and what it builds instead. ## At a glance | | | |---|---| | Founded | By Robert Leshner, co-founder of Compound; first fund, USTB, launched in early 2024 | | Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | | Layer | Fund sponsor, transfer agent, issuance platform for tokenized equities | | Key products | USTB (Short Duration US Government Securities Fund), USCC (crypto carry fund, now run by Bitwise), Opening Bell | | Scale (with date) | USTB held about 967 mn USD when Invesco took over its management in March 2026 (Blockhead) | | Competes with | BlackRock (BUIDL), Ondo (OUSG), Franklin Templeton (BENJI), Securitize | ## What it does USTB is a fund that holds short-dated US Treasury bills, sold to qualified investors and represented by a token on Ethereum and other chains. Its stated management fee is 15 bps. USCC, launched alongside it, earns a crypto carry yield, which means it holds crypto assets and hedges them with futures to collect the price gap between the two. USCC charges 75 bps on the same legal and technical rails. Superstate keeps what it calls a Digital Register. **A recordkeeping transfer agent** is the firm that keeps the official books of a fund's share issues and redemptions. In Superstate's design, the recordkeeping transfer agent stays the official source, and Superstate's on-chain register reconciles with it at least once a day. Superstate does not touch investor money and does not approve creations or redemptions. In 2026 Superstate changed its role. On 24 March Invesco announced it would become investment manager of USTB, and from 1 June USCC became the Bitwise Crypto Carry Fund. Superstate kept the technology and the register. In January 2026 it raised 82.5 mn USD, led by Bain Capital Crypto and Distributed Global, to build Opening Bell, a platform for SEC-registered companies to issue shares directly as tokens on Ethereum and Solana and settle in stablecoins. ## How it is different Most tokenized-Treasury issuers either are giant managers or wrap a giant's fund. Superstate tried the third path, running its own fund at 15 bps, and then handed management to an incumbent. The move matches the economics the course describes: at 15 to 20 bps an independent manager struggles to cover a fund's fixed costs, while an infrastructure provider can serve many managers at once. Its funds were early DeFi building blocks. USTB offered continuous pricing between daily NAV prints, and Sky's Spark allocated 300 mn USD of its first 1 bn USD tokenization tender to USTB. For price data, Chronicle's Verified Asset Oracle serves USTB, and Chainlink integrated data feeds for the fund in August 2024. Opening Bell aims at a different market from stock tokens issued by brokers. There, the company itself issues the tokenized share, so the token is the security rather than a claim on a custodian's holding. ## Where it fits [Anatomy of a tokenized fund](/en/blog/rwa/the-stack/) explains why a 15 bps fund needs scale to break even. [Getting prices on-chain](/en/blog/rwa/oracles-and-nav/) covers the oracles on USTB. [RWAs in DeFi](/en/blog/rwa/rwa-in-defi/) follows USTB and USCC as collateral and reserve assets. [Tokenized stocks and Robinhood Chain](/en/blog/rwa/tokenized-stocks/) sets Opening Bell against third-party stock tokens. Related profiles: [Securitize](/en/blog/companies/securitize/), [BlackRock](/en/blog/companies/blackrock/), [Ondo](/en/blog/companies/ondo/) and [Chronicle](/en/blog/companies/chronicle/). ## Risks and open questions The business is in transition. With USTB and USCC now managed by Invesco and Bitwise, Superstate's revenue depends on registry and issuance fees that it does not break out publicly. Opening Bell needs issuers. A public company must choose to issue tokenized shares, and the list of issuers is still short, so demand is unproven. The founding date and legal entity details are thinly documented in public sources, beyond the funding rounds and fund filings. ## What to watch next - **Opening Bell issuers**: each SEC-registered company that issues shares as tokens tests whether issuer-sponsored tokenized equity can compete with broker-issued stock tokens. - **Invesco's plans for USTB**: a large incumbent manager running the fund could lift its size and move more of the market toward incumbents. - **Transfer-agent clients**: other managers using Superstate's register would show that the infrastructure pivot pays. - **DTC's tokenization pilot**: a central depository offering tokenized holdings competes with independent transfer agents. ## Sources - 🟢 Invesco and Superstate, "Invesco and Superstate Advance Institutional Tokenization Through USTB Partnership", PR Newswire, 24 Mar 2026, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/invesco-and-superstate-advance-institutional-tokenization-through-ustb-partnership-302722437.html - 🟢 Superstate documentation, tokenized equities issuers, https://docs.superstate.com/tokenized-equities/issuers - 🟢 Superstate documentation for USCC and USTB (allowlist transfer, daily NAV, Digital Register reconciliation) - 🟡 Blockhead, "Invesco Takes Over Management of Superstate's $967M Tokenized Treasury Fund", 25 Mar 2026, https://www.blockhead.co/2026/03/25/invesco-takes-over-management-of-superstates-967m-tokenized-treasury-fund/ - 🟡 Fortune, "Invesco takes over Superstate's $900 million USTB T-bill fund", 24 Mar 2026, https://fortune.com/2026/03/24/invesco-superstate-ustb/ - 🟡 The Block, "Robert Leshner's Superstate introduces Ethereum-based tokenized fund", https://www.theblock.co/post/275554/robert-leshner-superstate-ethereum-tokenized-fund-ustb - 🟡 The Block, "Superstate introduces real-time continuous pricing for USTB", https://www.theblock.co/post/323995/robert-leshners-superstate-introduces-real-time-continuous-pricing-for-ustb-tokenized-treasurys-fund - 🟡 CoinDesk and Yahoo Finance, "BlackRock's BUIDL, Superstate and Centrifuge Win Spark's $1B Tokenized Asset Windfall", 2025