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Ondo Charts a Path from Tokenized Assets to On-Chain Prime Brokerage | Markets Outlook
00:09:00
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- [00:00]
A
Revenue is important, don't get me wrong. But I think right now is much more still about building the pipes. The scale comes after. Because as much as I love having, you know, $2 billion in tokenized treasury, 600 million in tokenized stocks, that's obviously a drop in the bucket compared to real traditional finance. But I do think the sentiment is that we're starting to get to a point where the pipes are in place.
- [00:29]
B
Our next yes is going to give us a full view of what's been going on at the Ondo Summit and Ando over the last year. We're joined now by Ondo Finance's president, Ian debode. Hey, Ian.
- [00:40]
A
Hi.
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C
Doing double duty today?
- [00:42]
A
Yeah, that's right. Busy day today.
- [00:44]
C
Busy day today. Just me.
- [00:46]
A
Maybe.
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C
Maybe you're ready for the top job.
- [00:48]
A
Yeah, maybe. Who knows?
- [00:51]
B
All right. We are at the Ondo Summit. Andy and I were here last year.
- [00:55]
A
Year.
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B
Talk to us about the last year for Ondo. We heard a little bit from vice chairman Patrick McHenry. But from your perspective, what's been going on over the last year and how is it culminating at the summit?
- [01:07]
A
Yeah, no, last. I mean, 2025 has been a phenomenal year for Ondo, quite frankly. We are now the number one in the tokenized treasury category with over $2 billion in TVL. We launched our on the global markets platform, which is really tokenized stocks and ETFs. That one is coming up on more or less 600 million in TVL, which gives us about 60% market share in that category. We've had partnerships with truly Legacy Tradfi players, MasterCard, JP Morgan, many, many more. So I think 2025 really is, I think the year where we were able to both scale the existing products that we have, launch new platforms with tokenized stocks and ETFs. And now really 2026, I think, is really bringing all those pieces together into a larger financial services ecosystem.
- [01:54]
C
You've clearly been skating to where the puck's going to be. Right. And it feels like you're aware that there's going to be competition for those end states where there might be a small number of real success stories. I noticed your slide this morning that expanded with the number of partnerships. Right, the big reveal slide. I mean, logos are important, aren't they? Right. You really want to mark territory and get people to inherently trust, be emailing in questions. How much of that can be done now prospectively with the idea that the revenue in the business model can fill itself in later?
- [02:28]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think it is absolutely right now, to your point, around the land grab that is happening. But at the same time, things are still rather friendly, quite frankly, in tokenization. Because, I mean, you've got all of the legacy tradfi incumbents here, the large asset managers, the banks, the custodians, everyone is still just trying to get on chain to build an ecosystem of things that work. I mean, revenue is important, don't get me wrong. But I think right now is much more still about building the pipes, the scale comes after. Because as much as I love having, you know, $2 billion in tokenized treasury, 600 million in tokenized stocks, that's obviously a drop in the bucket compared to real traditional finance. But I do think the sentiment is that we're starting to get to a point where the pipes are in place. We can really move more towards, instead of just tokenizing assets, start offering services. That's where the announcement of the Ondo perps really comes into play. And really moving more towards anything that exists in tradfi from a services perspective. And really prime brokerage in the end, starting to recreate that on chain. And that's what Ondo is really going to be focused on.
- [03:33]
C
Crypto has been such a big retail trading asset class. Its retail has kind of taught us the way to trade 247 and to trade a very wide range of assets. I think there's a little bit of reliance, especially with tokenized stocks, that retail is going to want to jump on that asset class next. In that context, what do you think there is this. Is this a lot of product being built for an untested amount of demand? Or do you know the demands there? Or do you think, I don't even need retail for us to be successful here? It's really about the infrastructure onshore in the United States.
- [04:09]
A
It's a great, great question. I think, you know, we launched our on the global markets platform back in September. We had done some user research to figure out is there really demand on chain for tokenized stocks and ETFs outside the US we feel pretty good about that thesis. We've always focused on tokenized stocks and ETFs because quite frankly, those are the assets that people want the most. Right? And billions of people around the world typically have struggled with getting access to those asset classes. So we felt that it would only make sense to put these assets on chain so that we could do for stocks and ETFs what stablecoins did for the US dollar. We launched it in September. We have only since then the platform's only grown more or less. We've only seen three days with net outflows out of the platform. It's only capital is only coming in. And as we get more distribution partnerships, I mean, right now we're live in the Binance Wallet. We announced Metamask, excluding exclusively today, The OkX wallet, Bitget, all of these, particularly Southeast Asian, but global exchanges are starting to offer stocks and ETFs to their users. It is much easier for them to do that in tokenized form than it is to work with normal stocks. Because normal stocks, you can't settle them 24,7 via stable coins, right? You can't do normal custody on them. These crypto exchanges have built out custody, accounting. Everything works with tokens. So it's much easier for them to do that with tokenized stocks. And we're seeing very rapid adoption from that retail segment, particularly if we end up now heading into, you know, a more challenged crypto environment where crypto prices are depressed, people want more exposure to stocks and ETFs. Right? There's a lot of FOMO around gold, around metals more broadly. Our platform right now enables anyone globally with stablecoins to buy these assets at the same price that they would be able to buy it, like in a brokerage account. That's a meaningful innovation and we're seeing real demand offshore.
- [05:59]
B
You mentioned the Metamask story that broke this morning just before we started the broadcast. A lot of announcements coming out of the summit. Which one is the one that you want to highlight that indicates where Ondo is going for 2026 on the perps by far.
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A
So we announced on the perps today it's going to be the platform that offers the best liquidity for perps on equities and commodities. And the reason we can offer that is because the key innovation that we're enabling is having spot assets. So, you know, any type of tokenized stock or ETF pledging those assets as collateral. So market makers can very easily open up a short, be fully hedged in the eyes of the platform and really add liquidity to the venue. Every single other venue right now only offers stablecoins as collateral. And that gets you into trouble when you really want deep liquidity on the other assets. So I think that really is the key differentiating factor. And the reason we can uniquely do that is because we've built on the global markets that puts the tradfi liquidity of all these spot assets on chain. So I think it's a good example that also just illustrates how all of our platforms are composable with each other. Like we can do perps in a different way because we've built on the global markets and ultimately what we're really building towards is, is really truly prime brokerage on chain, where perps is really just the first step in that path.
- [07:19]
C
One of the things, one of the recurring themes here is there's, there's, there's 15 different ways to buy Bitcoin now, right? And a lot of what you're talking about, I don't want to say relies, but is, is aligned with crypto native trading behavior of using centralized exchanges like Binance or the Eastern or Coinbase and using perps, right? These are, these are very natural things that have been battle tested now for quite a long time, but have to remain vibrant, right? That has to remain the case. Now you can buy ETFs on a bunch of crypto. So are people going to still be using those centralized exchanges and still using perps? Do you think that investor behavior continues?
- [07:58]
A
I think so. Quite frankly, I think all of these crypto exchanges, crypto wallets, all of these platforms are just evolving to be an everything app, right? When you take a little bit of a step back and you look at the space, it doesn't actually make any sense why you would have a separate platform for crypto and then all of a sudden a new platform for stocks and ETFs. Why does that have to be the case? Makes zero sense. You as an investor just want one app, one platform where you can buy anything you want. And if that includes going long on stocks or crypto via a perp, or via spot margin options, prediction markets, all these things should be possible all on the same platform. And I think that is the power of the, on the global markets platform and now on the perips that we're building and we're looking forward to partner with a lot of these crypto exchanges so that they can offer it to their end investors.
- [08:49]
B
Ian, thanks so much for joining us at the desk. Thanks for having us at the summit and we'll see you around.
- [08:53]
A
Sounds awesome. Thank you, thank you.