No.317
Usual USUAL
The Treasury Banker
🎭 keeps the safest money in the world, then slides the interest back across the counter to everyone who showed up
💬 “I keep the dullest treasure on earth, government IOUs that quietly earn a little interest. Most bankers pocket that interest. I count it, then slide it back to the people who showed up. That is the whole trick.”
- Usual makes a stablecoin called USD0, backed about 1:1 by tokenized US Treasury Bills.
- Those bills earn interest. Usual hands that interest back to the crowd through the USUAL governance token, instead of keeping it.
- It is not its own blockchain, it is a smart-contract protocol running on Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, and Base.
- Three tokens, three jobs: USD0 (the dollar), USD0++ (the savings receipt), USUAL (the vote).
📖 The Story
February 2024. A France-based team called Usual Labs shipped a stablecoin named USD0. The idea was plain: most stablecoins sit on a pile of bank deposits and corporate paper, and the issuer keeps every cent of interest. Usual wanted to back its dollar with the safest thing a treasury can hold, short-term US government bills, and then give the yield away.
The founders were not your usual crypto crowd. The CEO, Pierre Person, had been a member of the French parliament before he started writing token contracts. Alongside him stood Hugo Sallé de Chou and Adli Takkal Bataille. In April 2024 they raised about $7 million in seed funding, and on July 10 they opened USD0 to the public.
December 18, 2024. The governance token, USUAL, listed on a major exchange after a Launchpool reward season the month before. This is the token on this card. It is the steering wheel: holders vote on the rules and share in the money the protocol earns. Roughly 90% of the supply was set aside for the community rather than insiders.
Then the protocol did something most token projects never do. In November 2025, holders voted to shrink their own maximum supply, cutting it from 4 billion tokens down to 3 billion. Fewer tokens, by choice, decided by a show of hands. The tidy banker, it turned out, liked his ledgers lean.
📊 Stats
🧩 How it works
The trick is a circle, not a one-way pipe. Real-world US Treasury Bills (turned into tokens) get parked as collateral, the protocol mints USD0 against them, and those bills keep earning safe interest in the background. Most issuers would stop here and pocket that interest. Usual instead routes it back to the community through the USUAL token, and USUAL holders are the ones who vote on the rules, including how much USUAL ever exists. So the yield that the crowd's collateral earns loops right back to the crowd. None of this needs a brand-new chain, the smart contracts live on Ethereum and a couple of others.
🌗 Light & Shadow
- Backed by tokenized US Treasury Bills, about as boring and steady as collateral gets (USD0 is described as bankruptcy-remote, not parked in a single bank account)
- Interest from that collateral is returned to users through USUAL, rather than kept by one issuer
- Supply and rules are set by a public vote, and holders even chose to cut their own token cap in November 2025
- USUAL is a young token (live since December 2024) with a short track record compared with older stablecoins
- The cap can move. Governance can raise or lower supply, so the rules you buy into today can be voted to change tomorrow
- It leans on tokenized Treasury Bills and US interest rates, if yields fall or that real-world plumbing snags, the whole appeal softens
- Three tokens (USD0, USD0++, USUAL) is more moving parts for a beginner to keep straight than a plain coin
🧬 Evolution lineage
Usual is not a fork of anything, and not its own chain. Inside Usual Labs it is one of a family of three tokens that hand off to each other: the dollar, the staked receipt, then the vote.
As a category, it sits beside other real-world-asset and yield-bearing stablecoin projects like Ethena and DAI, its angle being collateral that is purely tokenized Treasury Bills with the yield given back.
🧭 Meet other friends
❓ FAQ
- What is Usual?
- A DeFi protocol that issues a stablecoin called USD0, backed about 1:1 by tokenized US Treasury Bills. The interest those bills earn is paid back to the community through the USUAL governance token, instead of being kept by one company. Usual itself is not a blockchain, it runs on Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, and Base.
- What is the difference between USD0, USD0++, and USUAL?
- Three tokens with three jobs. USD0 is the stablecoin worth about $1. USD0++ is what you get when you lock up your USD0, like a savings receipt. USUAL is the governance token, this page's coin, it votes on the rules and shares in the protocol's revenue.
- Who created Usual?
- Usual Labs, a France-based company. Its co-founders are Pierre Person (a former French member of parliament) as CEO, Hugo Sallé de Chou as COO, and Adli Takkal Bataille. The USD0 stablecoin arrived in 2024 and the USUAL token launched in December 2024.
- Is USUAL supply fixed like Bitcoin?
- No. Bitcoin's 21 million cap can never change, but USUAL's cap is set by a vote. It started at 4 billion tokens, then holders voted in November 2025 to cut the cap to 3 billion. Around 90% of supply is earmarked for the community.
⚠️ Not investment advice. All figures are for information only.