Ondo Finance expands tokenized asset lineup beyond government bonds to equities, private markets

Ondo Finance, a global real-world asset (RWA) tokenization firm, said Monday it is expanding its product lineup beyond tokenized government bonds to include equities, ETFs and private market instruments.

Rania Laharza, Ondo Finance's head of Asia-Pacific, made the remarks at a featured dialogue at the inaugural World Digital Assets Forum (WDAF), hosted by The Herald Business and the Korea Herald at The Grand Lotte Seoul in Sogong-dong. The session, themed "Bringing Global Finance On-Chain," was moderated by Lee Jae-hyuk, head of the virtual asset specialization center at Samil PwC.

Asked how the US regulatory environment — including the CLARITY Act — might shift following the Democratic Party's sweeping midterm election victory, Laharza said the passage of the GENIUS Act had been "a really great moment for the industry." "The US is clearly moving to legitimize stablecoins, and the CLARITY Act is still working its way through," she said. "I think these are steps in the right direction, showing that people are taking this asset class very seriously."

Laharza said tokenized assets remain efficient even as the macroeconomic environment shifts with rising interest rates. "Initially we focused on tokenizing US Treasuries so that stablecoin holders on-chain could earn a baseline yield," she said. "While that may have made us more vulnerable to falling rates at the time, tokenized government bonds can be accepted as collateral across multiple exchanges, making them useful as trading collateral even in a changing rate environment." She added that tokenized assets deliver not only operational efficiency but capital efficiency as well.

The company's product range is also diversifying. Tokenized government bonds remain its core offering, but Ondo Finance now holds more than 450 individual US equities and ETF baskets. It has recently broadened its on-chain portfolio — distributable globally and including three BlackRock products — and has extended its reach into private market instruments. "This diversified range of financial assets acts as a buffer against various macroeconomic conditions and helps us respond to the assets users are looking for," Laharza said. Beyond US assets, the company recently partnered with Mirae Asset Securities to tokenize five global ETFs, and in September signed an MOU with Kakao Pay Securities to jointly research infrastructure for the overseas distribution and tokenization of domestically listed Korean equities.

Laharza cited figures to illustrate the growth potential of the RWA market. "Ondo Finance has always focused on bringing on-chain the assets with the highest real-world demand and the deepest liquidity," she said. "Just as stablecoins brought the US dollar on-chain, the next largest asset class is US Treasuries, followed by equities."

"In practice, we have seen the tokenized government bond market grow nearly 20 times over the past few years," she added. On the equities side, she said the company became the first to reach $1 billion in total value locked (TVL) within just a few months of launch — roughly a year after entering the market. The tokenized equities market now stands at $4 billion. "Compared to the multi-trillion-dollar traditional financial market it is still a very small slice, but the rapid on-chain growth we are seeing is data that is hard to deny," she said.

Laharza identified broader asset accessibility as the next frontier. "Beyond expanding the existing pool of assets where we have confirmed product-market fit, the next step we are considering is widening access to the diverse asset classes users are eager for," she said. "That is exactly what we are very excited to share through our private market products — people can now access pre-IPO private markets through fractional ownership."