Usual USD (USD0)

What Usual USD is

Usual USD, ticker USD0, is a stablecoin backed by tokenized short-duration government debt rather than by bank deposits. Usual's documentation describes USD0 as "the core stablecoin, fully backed by US Treasury Bills, usable for payments, trading, and collateral across DeFi," and states that it is backed by "tokenized US Treasury Bills and repurchase agreements (repos)" (source: Usual documentation, read September 2026).

The design argument is about where the yield goes. A conventional fiat-backed stablecoin holds treasuries and keeps the interest. Usual's documentation states that the protocol's separate USUAL token represents "100% of protocol revenue rights" and that "100% of the value generated flows back to the community," through locked USUALx holders and the DAO treasury rather than to a corporate issuer. USD0 itself is the non-yielding unit; the yield is routed elsewhere by design.

For where to buy Usual USD from your country or state, see the availability tables on this site and the venues listed at Exchanges.

How it works

The collateral is tokenized treasury exposure rather than cash. Usual's documentation names Hashnote's USYC token as the primary collateral, describing it as reverse repos and US government securities with BNY Mellon as custodian, and lists M by M0, USTBL by SPIKO and a limited amount of USDC as further accepted assets. Those are real world asset tokens: on-chain claims on off-chain portfolios, each with its own issuer and custodian.

Minting comes in two shapes because the collateral is permissioned and the token is not. Usual's documentation describes permissioned institutional participants who deposit and redeem tokenized real-world assets directly for USD0 at par, and "permissionless users (retail, DeFi participants)" who "interact via an indirect matching system" that pairs them with Collateral Providers. A retail user deposits USDC, a Collateral Provider supplies the RWA leg, and USD0 is issued. Both paths, the documentation says, enable one-for-one on-chain minting and redemption. USD0 itself is a standard ERC-20 and "fully transferable."

Risk parameters are stated rather than implied. The documentation says USD0 runs with "no leverage" and "no fractional reserves," constrains portfolio duration below 0.33 years, and states "zero tolerance for FX risk and credit risk." An insurance fund holds between 0.33% and 5.33% of USD0 supply for stress scenarios. Duration below four months is the parameter that matters most in practice, because it caps how far the collateral can fall if rates move against the portfolio.

Transparency is on-chain rather than periodic. Usual's documentation states that reserve data is "visible on-chain at all times," which removes the dependence on monthly attestations that fiat-backed issuers rely on, and replaces it with dependence on the accuracy of the underlying RWA tokens' own reporting.

Supply and tokenomics

USD0 has no cap and no emission schedule. Supply is a function of minting and redemption against collateral. The token that does have tokenomics is USUAL, and the documentation is specific about how it accrues value.

USUAL is both the governance token and the claim on revenue. Usual's documentation states that it distributes "daily to active participants," that holders who lock it into USUALx receive "22% of all daily USUAL emissions," and that USUALx holders qualify for weekly protocol revenue distributions. Revenue distributions began on January 13, 2025.

USD0++ is the second piece of the system, and it is where a holder should slow down. It is the staked, longer-dated form of USD0 rather than a variant of it, and its behavior differs from the base stablecoin in ways the documentation describes separately. Anyone treating USD0++ as interchangeable with USD0 is holding a different instrument with a different redemption profile.

History

Usual belongs to a wave of stablecoins built on tokenized treasuries rather than bank deposits, made possible by RWA tokens like USYC that put a short-duration government portfolio on-chain with an institutional custodian behind it.

What distinguishes Usual's version is the routing of yield. Rather than the issuer retaining the interest earned on reserves, the protocol issues USUAL against that revenue and directs it to lockers and to the DAO. The documentation frames this as the community capturing value that a corporate issuer would otherwise keep, and dates the start of weekly revenue distributions to January 13, 2025.

The two-tier minting structure, permissioned for direct RWA deposits and permissionless through Collateral Providers, is the practical concession that makes the model work: the collateral is subject to securities-law restrictions on who may hold it, while the resulting stablecoin is not.

Risks and what to watch

Collateral issuer risk is the exposure that does not exist in a bank-deposit stablecoin. USD0's backing is other people's tokens: USYC, M, USTBL. Each carries its own issuer, custodian, redemption process and legal wrapper, and USD0's soundness is downstream of all of them.

On-chain transparency shows balances, not encumbrances. Seeing an RWA token in a reserve address proves the token is there; it does not prove what the token itself is a claim on, which depends on the underlying issuer's own reporting.

The insurance fund is sized as a percentage band rather than a fixed sum, and 0.33% at the bottom of the band is thin cover for a stress event. Read it as a buffer for ordinary friction rather than as protection against a collateral failure.

Redemption at par is a protocol promise dependent on the Collateral Provider matching system for permissionless users. In stressed conditions, matching capacity is the thing to watch, because a retail holder without direct RWA access exits through the secondary market where a depeg shows up first.

Regulatory treatment of tokenized-treasury stablecoins is unsettled in most major markets, and listing availability moves with it. This site tracks availability by jurisdiction on its exchange and jurisdiction pages rather than here.

Frequently asked questions

What backs USD0?

Tokenized US Treasury Bills and repurchase agreements. Usual's documentation names Hashnote's USYC, custodied at BNY Mellon, as the primary collateral, with M by M0, USTBL by SPIKO and a limited amount of USDC also accepted.

Does USD0 pay yield to holders?

No. USD0 is the non-yielding unit. Revenue from the collateral is routed to the USUAL token, whose locked form USUALx receives 22% of daily USUAL emissions and qualifies for weekly protocol revenue distributions.

Can anyone mint USD0 directly?

Only permissioned institutional participants deposit and redeem the tokenized real-world assets directly. Retail and DeFi users mint through an indirect matching system that pairs them with Collateral Providers.

What is the difference between USD0 and USD0++?

USD0 is the base stablecoin. USD0++ is its staked, longer-dated form, with its own redemption profile described separately in Usual's documentation. They are not interchangeable.

Where can you buy Usual USD?

Availability depends on your country or US state. See where to buy Usual USD for the exchanges serving your jurisdiction, and Exchanges to compare fees, kyc requirements and payment methods.