Wall Street’s slow walk to blockchains has a new marker. Ondo Finance says the total value locked (TVL) across its products has crossed $4 billion. TVL is the dollar value of assets held in a
Wall Street’s slow walk to blockchains has a new marker. Ondo Finance says the total value locked (TVL) across its products has crossed $4 billion.
TVL is the dollar value of assets held in a platform’s products. The milestone comes as global regulators and data firms take a closer look at how tokenized markets actually behave.
Ondo builds tokenized versions of traditional investments. In simple words, tokenization means issuing a blockchain-based token that represents ownership of a real-world asset, such as a government bond or a share of stock.
Related: Analyst issues sarcastic response to 31.4% crypto tax expansion plan
Ondo started with tokenizing U.S. Treasuries, which are yield-bearing debt issued by the U.S. government.
The crypto company says it is now the largest platform for that product. RWA.xyz data ranks Ondo’s tokenized Treasury holdings at $3 billion, the most of any issuer.
Its newer product lines are catching up. According to Ondo, more than $1.3 billion of the total amount now sits in tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
The company also names portfolios and private markets as asset classes it is expanding into. It says its products have drawn more than 1 million cumulative holders.
That mix lines up with where trading activity is heading. A recent report from blockchain analytics firm Dune found that tokenized stocks make up just 8% of the $34.5 billion RWA market but account for 93% of onchain trading. Those figures cover data through Aug. 31.
Cash-equivalent tokens, such as tokenized Treasuries, form the largest class at nearly $18 billion, yet Dune says they barely trade.
Ondo credits part of the growth to how its tokens trade.
Ondo Stocks taps liquidity from traditional exchanges through a request-for-quote (RFQ) system.
Liquidity is how easily an asset can be bought or sold without moving its price. In an RFQ setup, a buyer asks for a price and a market maker quotes one.
That design targets a weak spot the International Monetary Fund flagged on Oct. 8.
In a blog post, IMF economists wrote that tokenized markets remain relatively illiquid and more volatile than their traditional counterparts.
They added that fragmentation across networks and venues hampers price formation.
Ondo says leading wallets and apps connect users to that liquidity. Its tokens can also move between users without permission across Solana, Ethereum, and BNB Chain, three widely used blockchain networks.
The IMF’s October Global Financial Stability Report, its first with a chapter dedicated to tokenized markets, named Ondo among the top tokenization platforms.
Ondo appeared alongside Securitize, Circle, Tether and Bridgetower.
The fund’s blog sketched how big the market already is. Tokenized repurchase agreements, short-term loans backed by securities, average $300 billion to $350 billion in daily volume.
Other tokenized assets add about $65 billion a day. That remains small next to the roughly $13 trillion traded daily in the U.S. repo market.
The IMF also found that more than half of tokenized trading happens outside traditional market hours. About 80% of the tokenized equity trades it analyzed were for less than one share.
Ondo calls the milestone an early sign of how big tokenization could get, saying it expects that scale to eventually be measured in trillions.
The IMF points to the same horizon from a different angle. It notes that global capital markets hold $300 trillion in assets, and it is urging regulators to clarify the legal rights tied to tokenized assets before the market gets much bigger.
Related: Elon Musk takes aim at the customer service industry
