Tokenized stocks are rapidly gaining popularity – Ian de Bode, President of Ondo Finance believe they are becoming one of the most practical and scalable use cases for cryptocurrencies.
The company said that since its launch in September 2025, its tokenized stock platform Ondo Global Markets has exceeded $500 million in total value locked and more than $7 billion in trading volume. RWA.xyz data shows the platform is currently the largest provider, ahead of issuer Kraken’s xStocks and Robinhood. The overall market for equity tokens is approaching $1 billion, growing 27% in the past month alone.
Prior to this, Ondo started out with tokenized U.S. Treasury bonds and is currently a leading issuer with over $2 billion in assets.
In an interview with CoinDesk, de Bode said that while tokenization attempts increasingly include alternative assets such as real estate or private credit, Ondo is now focused on stocks and ETFs with strong price discovery capabilities, deep liquidity and clear valuations. De Bode will speak at the CoinDesk Consensus conference in Miami this May.
“You can tokenize something to make it easier to access or use it as collateral,” DeBord said. “Stocks fit both, and they’re priced like assets that people actually understand — unlike buildings in Manhattan.”
Ondo issues tokenized notes backed by shares held by clearing brokers. These tokens can be moved freely between wallets like stablecoins, and users only need to perform KYC during the minting phase. This structure allows assets to be traded on decentralized finance (DeFi) venues, where other tokenized equity models often struggle due to transfer restrictions or lack of liquidity.
According to DeBord, a major advantage is instant minting and burning, which allows large investors to trade millions of dollars of tokenized shares at a price that reflects their brokerage accounts without premiums or slippage. One investor minted $17 million worth of Google stock tokens, he said.
The mechanism attracts users in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America, as well as local cryptocurrency investors who want to switch between cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin Google shares without leaving your wallet.
But Debord said liquidity remained reduced over the weekend. Cryptocurrency markets and decentralized finance (DeFi) operate 24/7 – while traditional finance (TradFi) operates Monday to Friday. This mismatch makes it difficult for market makers to hedge equity tokens.
de Bode said that could change if the NYSE and Nasdaq continue their plans to support 24/7 tokenized stock trading, effectively synchronizing the TradFi and DeFi clocks.
“It would be a godsend if TradFi moved to 24/7,” he said. “That’s our biggest bottleneck.”
Ondo’s focus this year is on expanding its global marketplace platform—adding hundreds of assets, integrating with new blockchains, and providing support for cryptocurrency exchanges looking to compete with retail brokers.
“Our goal is not to compete with exchanges,” DeBord said. “We power them. Think of us as the tether to the stock.”
