For years, the promise of bringing traditional financial assets onto the blockchain felt like a distant dream. We talked about it, we wrote about it, but the actual execution often hit snags. Now, it seems, the gears are truly turning.
- Ondo Finance has launched its Global Markets platform, making over 100 U.S. stocks and ETFs available on Ethereum 24/5 for eligible investors globally. This initiative aims to increase accessibility and liquidity for tokenized traditional assets.
- The platform allows for easy transfer of tokenized equities across wallets and protocols, directly accessing traditional exchange liquidity. This represents a significant step in bridging traditional finance with digital assets, with plans to expand to over 1,000 assets by year-end.
- The broader trend of tokenizing traditional assets is gaining momentum, with companies like Block Street, Kraken, and Robinhood also making significant moves in the space, indicating a potential market cap of $2 trillion by 2030.
Ondo Finance, a name you might recognize from the world of tokenized real-world assets, just made a significant move. They launched their Global Markets platform. This means over 100 U.S. stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are now available on Ethereum, 24 hours a day, five days a week.
Think of it this way: you can now get exposure to Apple or Tesla stock, or a broad market ETF, directly on the blockchain. This isn’t just for a select few. Eligible investors in Asia-Pacific, Europe, Africa, and Latin America can access these assets. The plan is to grow this selection to over 1,000 assets by the end of the year.
What makes this different? Many earlier attempts at tokenized stocks stayed locked inside their own platforms. Transferring them was a headache, and liquidity (how easily you can buy or sell without moving the price much) often felt thin. Ondo aims to change that.
Their design focuses on accessibility. You can transfer these tokenized equities across different wallets, exchanges, and protocols. It also provides direct access to the deep liquidity of traditional exchanges. This means you can trade with confidence, knowing there’s a market for your assets.
Nathan Allman, Ondo Finance’s founder and CEO, put it plainly. He said Global Markets is a “breakthrough in financial access.” He drew a parallel to stablecoins, which brought the U.S. dollar onchain. Now, he suggests, Ondo is doing the same for U.S. securities.
These tokenized stocks represent the total economic return of the underlying U.S. stocks and ETFs. These assets are held safely at U.S.-registered broker-dealers, with cash in transit also secured. It’s a bridge between the old world of finance and the new.
While the platform itself doesn’t serve U.S. and U.K. retail or institutional participants directly, the tokenized stocks and ETFs can be traded peer-to-peer onchain at any time. This opens up new possibilities for global investors.
The system runs on Ethereum today. Support for BNB Chain and Solana is coming soon. LayerZero provides the interoperability, allowing these assets to move between different blockchains. Chainlink acts as the oracle platform, feeding trusted price data to the system.
A host of major crypto players are already on board. OKX Wallet, Bitget Wallet, Trust Wallet, Gate, BitGo, Ledger, and Morpho all support these new tokenized assets. Even 1inch, a popular decentralized exchange aggregator, has upgraded its Swap API.
Sergej Kunz, a 1inch co-founder, mentioned their upgrade helps reduce barriers and expands access to these tokenized real-world assets. Ian De Bode, Ondo Finance’s Chief Strategy Officer, added that the 1inch Swap API helps provide deep liquidity and competitive pricing for their assets.
The Growing Tide of Tokenized Assets
Ondo isn’t alone in this space. The idea of tokenizing traditional assets is gaining serious momentum. It feels like a quiet revolution, happening one asset at a time.
Ondo recently integrated with Block Street, a startup that calls itself a “unified liquidity layer for tokenized stocks.” Block Street aims to bring institutional-grade liquidity, borrowing, shorting, and hedging to decentralized finance (DeFi). They even cite major traditional finance players like Citadel and Jane Street as backers.
Block Street’s system uses “two-way markets.” This means you can borrow tokenized stocks using stablecoins like USDT. Or, you can borrow USDT against your tokenized stocks, such as AAPLon (Apple onchain) or TSLAon (Tesla onchain). It’s a way to get more leverage and flexibility in the DeFi space.
Other big names are also making moves. Kraken, a well-known crypto exchange, expanded its xStocks support to BNB Chain, Tron, and Ethereum, alongside Solana. These xStocks, like AAPLx or SPYx, offer trading 24/5 on Kraken, with weekend trading planned. Once withdrawn to a self-custodied wallet, they trade onchain at any time.
Robinhood, another familiar name in retail investing, also stepped into onchain equities. They offer over 200 tokenized U.S. stocks to users in the EU, built on Arbitrum. Meanwhile, Coinbase is actively seeking approval from the SEC to bring tokenized stocks to the U.S. market.
This isn’t just a crypto niche anymore. A recent McKinsey report, cited by Block Street, suggests that tokenized financial assets are moving from pilot projects to large-scale deployment. The report estimates the total tokenized market cap, excluding stablecoins, could reach $2 trillion by 2030.
That’s a significant number. It tells us that major financial institutions see the potential here. Those with blockchain capabilities in place will likely have a strategic advantage as this trend continues to grow.
Ondo’s Broader Vision
Ondo Finance has been busy beyond just these new stock offerings. Earlier this year, they introduced their own Layer 1 blockchain, called Ondo Chain. This chain is designed to speed up the creation of institutional-grade financial markets directly onchain. While the tokenized stocks aren’t on Ondo Chain yet, it shows a long-term vision.
Last July, Ondo and Pantera Capital announced plans to invest $250 million into real-world asset projects. Their goal is clear: to bring traditional financial markets and the digital assets sector closer together. It’s a bridge-building exercise on a grand scale.
What we’re seeing now with tokenized stocks is more than just a new product. It’s a glimpse into a future where assets move freely across the globe, unconstrained by traditional market hours or geographic borders. It’s a future where a digital wallet holds not just crypto, but a piece of the world’s biggest companies.
