Publicly traded, liquid securities are the 'low-hanging fruit' for tokenization before the industry moves to less transparent and less liquid private markets, said Nathan Allman, CEO of #ONDO Finance.
According to him, the growing interest in stablecoins serves as a catalyst for a new phase of development of on-chain assets. In an interview published last week, Allman noted that the successful IPO of the company #Circle fueled the already overheated interest in blockchain infrastructure and the prospects for its institutionalization.
CRCL shares soared following the Senate's approval of the GENIUS Act—trading on Tuesday opened at $250, which is about 70% higher than values a week ago.
In my opinion, stablecoins are just a showcase, merely the tip of the iceberg, Allman noted. We will see how a similar logic will be applied to other large and liquid assets.
Like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton, $ONDO offers on-chain access to tokenized US Treasury bonds. The company is preparing to launch its own tokenization platform, which is designed to allow applications and crypto wallets to offer users access to publicly traded American stocks, bonds, and ETFs.
Attempts to tokenize private markets have been made before. Allman recalls that back in 2019-2021, while working at Goldman Sachs, his team tested the tokenization of syndicated loans, the settlement of which traditionally takes weeks. However, according to him, real scalability is still a long way off.
In practice, before tokenization becomes a real limiting factor for accessibility, a lot of work needs to be done on automation, digitization, and standardization of documentation, he explained. But these processes are already underway in other segments.
Allman emphasized: tokenizing illiquid assets does not automatically make them liquid. He also noted the efforts of major players like BlackRock and Apollo Global Management, which seek to enhance the liquidity of private assets and thus pave the way for broader tokenization adoption. For instance, in January, Apollo launched access to its Diversified Credit Fund through a tokenized form.
I am confident that the overwhelming majority of regulated financial assets in the future will be settled on blockchain rails, he noted. And this no longer sounds like a crazy prophecy.
How do you assess investor interest in the Circle IPO?
Allman: Stablecoins are at the moment perhaps the only real real-world assets (#RWA ), that have managed to achieve product-market fit in the institutional environment. They have become an excellent model of how tokenization can solve real problems—whether it’s expanding global accessibility, reducing costs, or ensuring on-chain programmability.
And while much is said about potential benefits such as instant clearing or modular integration into DeFi, the key strength of stablecoins is their sheer scalability: they have proven their viability in the market. This is especially evident in the case of USDT, which has gained a strong foothold in Latin America, Turkey, and several countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
$USDC , on the contrary, is more actively used in the USA and in the DeFi ecosystem. But we at Ondo are betting on transferring these advantages to other asset classes—government bonds, public stocks, ETFs.
You are launching a tokenization platform. What do you think about hyper-optimistic forecasts for the volumes of tokenized assets?
Allman: I think that in the long term, the very concept of a tokenized asset will lose its current uniqueness. What is now considered a new paradigm will eventually become the standard. Numbers like $1 trillion, $5 trillion, or $10 trillion in tokenized assets will be perceived as background figures, not as signals of disruption.
Today, the global securities settlement system is hyper-fragmented: almost every country has its own clearing infrastructure, its own SROs, and registrars. We are confident that the pressure to transition to distributed ledgers—not necessarily public—will only increase. Public Ethereum is not a panacea; in some cases, a permissioned environment and special compliance levels will be required.
What have you learned from communicating with the SEC this year?
Allman: The dialogue turned out to be quite productive. The Commission showed itself open to discussion, ready to listen and propose counter-solutions. This, frankly, instills optimism—we are indeed thinking more about how we can interact with the regulator on a regular basis, rather than going offshore or building architecture outside the jurisdiction.
There are several possible paths we could take to bring products like Global Markets (tokenized American public securities) to the US market. We have not yet chosen a final trajectory, but discussions with the SEC are ongoing.
After the meeting, I had the impression that the window of opportunity has truly opened. Perhaps we and other industry participants will no longer be forced to conduct business in exile.
What is the key difference between Ondo and traditional players entering tokenization?
Allman: Our niche is the ecosystem and distribution. We do not just tokenize assets; we build infrastructure for their issuance, servicing, and turnover. Ondo Chain is the base platform, a kind of gateway for on-chain issuance of securities. We want issuers to be able to launch their products with us and then scale them through the open blockchain landscape.
In addition to this, we are developing auxiliary protocols that create additional utility around these assets. This includes both our own products and third-party securities listed on Ondo Chain. Thus, we find ourselves in a unique position—between infrastructure and market, between issuance and user level.
