Blockchain.com and Ondo Expand Tokenized US Stocks Access to Europe

Remy: Welcome to FINTECH.TV, I'm Remy Blaire. While Washington remains in a stalemate over crypto rules, the industry is not waiting around. Blockchain.com and Ondo Finance just announced a major expansion, bringing tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs to eligible users across Europe. Now, this partnership allows users to access regulated directly through a digital wallet, a move that's already rolled out across Africa and South America. Joining us now at Ondo Summit 2026 is Peter Smith, CEO and co-founder at Blockchain.com. Peter, great to have you here. Thank you so much for joining me.

Peter: Thank you.

Remy: So first and foremost tell me about this expansion into Europe. Why now?

Peter: I thought, you know, we are basically trying to roll out products in a really organized way across markets. we're rolling out in a few markets. Take that feedback from customers and incorporate that more markets. And so this is sort of reached the end of our beta phase in Nigeria. And we rolled out kind of in South America and felt like Europe would be there. Right. You know, next geography to expand access to the product.

Remy: And when we're talking about access here in the US, it is easy to access stocks as well as funds. But when we're talking about overseas markets and given the growth in terms of US equity markets, there's a lot of demand. So walk us through this and some of the innovations that are taking place.

Peter: Yeah. You know I think one of the big sort of, um, global inequities in the world has been that most people in the world historically have not had access to U.S. financial markets or the dollar. Um, and I think crypto has basically gone a long way toward fixing that. Like today, there's 40 million of our customers around the world that have access to the US dollar. That would have never been the case before crypto. And, you know, by the end of another year or two, all of those people also have access to US capital markets So US equities. I think when you look at the last 40 or 50 years, the US markets have vastly outperformed sort of every other geography. And so really it's about kind of leveling the playing field to financial access and potentially financial success for people around the world.

Remy: Yeah. And on a day like today when we are seeing red for most of the equity market, but we are looking at a name such as Walmart, a US retail name hit the $1 trillion market club. That's something that we monitor. But for people out there who are wondering why should they go with, say, a Blockchain.com wallet instead of a heavily regulated custodian, what would you say to them?

Peter: I mean, honestly, most of our customers are not people that would use a heavily regulated custodian. Um, you know, and so it's not usually that kind of trade off that customers are having. The answer to like, why go with Blockchain.com though, is really simple. We've been doing business for about 14 years now. Uh, you know, and in that time period, we've never broken a trade. We've never not honored a withdrawal. Uh, and we've always sort of done what's in the best interests of our customers. Uh, that's a really hard thing to pull off in crypto much harder than it is to pull off in TradFi. And so I think when, you know, you ask customers, you know, why trade with us? Why transact with us? It ultimately comes back to that element of trust. And the, you know, funny thing about trust is that, you know, it's earned. And we've spent a long time building that trust with our customers.

Remy: Yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned that, Peter, because 15 years is a long time. Even when we look at some of the crypto prices. Right. Crypto majors 14 years ago, 15 years ago, a stark contrast despite what's happening in the marketplace right now. So what do you make of what's happening now, especially as we're having TradFi and DeFi conversion? We're talking about institutional adoption. How do you see all of this actually shaking out and affecting the retail consumer stateside?

Peter: I think one of the things that we're seeing from the convergence of crypto and TradFi assets is the correlation problem, which most of you know, TradFi assets are incredibly correlated now, right? So the fact that we're surprised at Walmarts up and everything else is down. It kind of goes to the point of like how correlated these assets are. That correlation matrix is also impacting crypto as crypto becomes more TradFI dominated, which is kind of, you know, interesting to see. I expect that correlation to break. I think that crypto assets will trade very differently than most U.S. equities. at least, you know, today, like these things are trading in a pretty correlated fashion. Um, I think the other reality is that most market participants right now are very nervous about the IRA. Yeah. And you see that actually in the fact that Walmart is up. Why is Walmart up? Because people shop more Walmart when the economy is not doing well. Uh, and so I think that you're seeing that sort of contagion and spill over into the crypto market.

But what I'm really fond of reminding people is in crypto, you can make a lot of money, but it's very hard to do quickly. It's actually easy to make a lot of money in crypto if you're willing to be patient. It's really hard to do it really fast. Unfortunately, a lot of people want to make money very quickly in crypto, and that usually backfires pretty spectacularly.

Remy: Yeah. And Peter, you've been through many market cycles, especially when it comes to crypto. I'm sure you've witnessed this firsthand, but I do want to focus in on this uncertainty that you're talking about, in particular to the regulatory environment in DC. So we saw the SEC, CFTC gather last week, and of course, we had the White House crypto gathering earlier this week on Monday. And there's a lot of uncertainty about the Clarity passing, Clarity Act passing. So what are your expectations? I know you have a lot of opinions when it comes to regulation.

Peter: I think the Clarity Act is going to pass in the next few months. I definitely think it will happen before the midterms. I'm probably more optimistic about the bill than some of my sort of industry contemporaries. I think that we've gotten our sort of ideas, our head, that we're going to get a perfect bill. And what I've learned from doing regulatory, being very involved in the MiCA process, the U.K. process, Asia, is that nothing is ever going to be perfect. so I think that something and something that gives us predictability and stability is better than sort of not getting a bill done. If we don't get a bill done in the next couple of months, it's going to be a couple of years. And so I think it's much better to sort of take what we have now and move forward is industry, and then we can work on improving it together than it is to kind of, you know, potentially be stuck in limbo for another couple of years.

Remy: And of course, we are only in the first quarter of 2026 with everything that's unfolded so far, it does feel like it should be later in the year. But I do want to ask you about plans for your organization moving course. What's the outlook and do you have plans for an IPO anytime soon?

Peter: We definitely have the aspiration to be a public company. Uh, and it's definitely something that we're actively working towards. I think when there is more sort of definitive news about that, we'll, uh, we will we'll be very proactive about talking about it.

Remy: Well, Peter was great talking to you at Ondo Summit 2026 in New York. Thank you so much for your perspective, and thank you for sharing your insights.

Peter: Thank you.