Wall Street is issuing “digital twins” of stocks, and Ondo is at the forefront
Imagine you own a share of Circle. Now it gets a digital twin that lives on the blockchain but is the real thing—not just “something that looks roughly the same.”
That’s exactly what Ondo is doing with DTCC. You could call DTCC “Wall Street’s main clearinghouse”: it handles the settlement of trades on Nasdaq and the NYSE. Ondo has issued tokens with the same CUSIP and ticker as the securities themselves, backed by real assets held in DTCC custody. These aren’t tokens “inspired by” the originals—they’re twins with the same paperwork.
How it unfolded:
June: Ondo joins the DTCC’s tokenization working group. It includes more than 50 companies, including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Nasdaq, NYSE, Robinhood, and Circle.
July 15: launch of the first tokenized stocks through the DTCC service.
September 16: Ondo becomes the first tokenization company in Fund/SERV. This network processes more than 85% of U.S. mutual fund transaction volume. Tokenized funds can now connect directly to traditional distributors.
Why does this matter? Crypto and traditional finance used to be like two neighbors who don’t speak to each other. Now Wall Street is integrating blockchain into its infrastructure rather than building a parallel world. Ondo CEO Ian De Bode says their infrastructure was designed to work alongside institutional market infrastructure, not compete with it.
What about the ONDO token? It reacted, rising from about $0.31 to $0.37 between July 14 and 16.
A sober perspective: this is no guarantee of growth, and the token remains volatile. Ondo itself warns that buyers of these products could lose some or all of their investment. This is news about infrastructure, not a reason to make investment decisions.
