Ondo Finance Tops $2.5 Billion in Tokenized Assets as Europe Expansion Accelerates

Remy: Welcome to FINTECH.TV, I'm Remy Blaire. Ondo Finance has officially broken the $2.5 billion barrier in tokenized assets, pivoting from a DeFi startup to a critical infrastructure layer for global capital. In late 2025, the firm secured regulatory approval to operate across the European Economic Area and through strategic partnerships in Southeast Asia as well as Latin America. Ondo is allowing users to convert local fiat directly into tokenized U.S. assets. Well, joining me as the Ondo Summit gets underway here in New York is Matthieu De Vergnes, managing director of the global institutional business. Matthew, great to have you here. Thank you so much for joining.

Matthieu: Great to be here.

Remy: Well, here we are in New York City and the Ondo Summit is well underway. So first tell us about the European expansion.

Matthieu: Sure. So what the core product that we have is to provide access to US capital markets abroad. As part of that, we've expanded substantially historically in Asia, in the Middle East and Africa. And very recently, as was discussed this morning, had approval for prospectus in the European Union that will allow us now to access the whole retail in your communities, or 500 million investors with US stocks and ETFs. We also have a partnership that we announced with BX Digital to distribute these products. So we're very excited about completing on that promise of access now expanded to Europe. And I think it's also a good sign, as we think of the US in terms of moving forward with providing more access to investors, to these tokenized assets.

Remy: Yeah, and given the fact that you are expanding in other markets outside of the US, tell me about the regulatory landscape and how that affects these markets.

Matthieu: So I think we've seen differing rates of landscapes across regions overall. Our view is we want to see market structure bill passed in the best form possible. You want to see progress. And I think the regulatory regime and regulators are critical for that and for the industry. We are supportive to make sure that the infrastructure that TradFi is building towards can be interoperable with what we are, what we are building. And so today, our focus is really on the product and developing it and making sure the right regulation supports its deployment across geographies.

Remy: And while we're making our way around the globe. Tell me about emerging market adoption right now.

Matthieu: So as I mentioned, a lot of the of the holders today are in some of these emerging markets in Asia, in Africa and Middle East. One of the reasons there is we are for many of these, the easiest way to access US capital markets. Our holders are typically people who have been on chain and so have capital on chain would like to deploy, they'd like to diversify. And that's what we allow with whether it's stocks or ETFs. And so whether it's any of these geographies, we think there's a significant access play. And beyond that obviously we're looking to the utility play. And so putting on chain of services we announced under purpose this morning it will bring more services on chains as investors in emerging markets don't only have access to the assets themselves, but also have access to the services that today are harder to access than some of those geographies or require significant capital.

Remy: And of course, since we're fresh off this announcement that you just mentioned regarding Ondo Perps, can you break it down for us?

Matthieu: Sure. So Ondo Perps have obviously existed and been very popular in 2025. And we touched on there's about 10 trillion in volume last year. We've seen early stages of equity perps on chain as well. What we've decided to bring is equity perps supported by Ondo Global Markets. Where to to put it simply for for the audience you're able to use now the equity as collateral. And so it's a much more efficient way of using perps where other solutions today require you to have stablecoins as, as collateral and then off chain as a hedge via the equity So you're basically doubling the capital efficiency by being able to use that equity as the hedge on chain. And we're uniquely positioned to do that because we have all the global markets that provides those tokenized equities on chain.

Remy: And finally, before I let you go, we're here at Ondo Summit where it's TradFi and DeFi policy holders as well. So what do you think the conversation and focus has been on this year and why?

Matthieu: Sure. So I think, look, last year was tremendous for trad fine tokenization. We saw moving from pilots to real scale applications, whether it was stablecoins, whether it was money market funds, whether it was tokenized deposits, we've seen legislative agenda shifts and we've seen more collaboration between TradFi and digital natives. I think as we look as this year, really that third part is what I'm particularly excited about is increased collaboration between digital natives and TradFi. We partnered last year with Mastercard, with JP Morgan, and we looked to announce much more of these partnerships soon, and it's really bringing together the trad fire world, the DeFi ecosystem, and us acting a bit as a bridge between both. That will generate a lot of momentum for 2026.

Remy: And finally, before I let you go, since you mentioned those collaborations, what impact will this have? Not on the institutional side, but for viewers out there who are watching and are on the retail side?

Matthieu: Well, I think there's multiple dimensions. There's users that are already somewhat comfortable with on chain where they think today, if you're outside the US, you can access our products and you can already benefit. I think the users that are maybe less familiar, and that may be wondering for very legitimate reasons, why should I care? Why? Why does this matter? The key piece is that we will be bringing, by collaborating with TradFi additional services that they may not have access to today, that you can only if you're a very wealthy investor or an institutional investor that on a purpose is one example. There's a lot of other examples of services that we look to provide in a much more tailored way, an accessible way to investors initially outside of the US and in the US, hopefully in the in the near term.

Remy: Well,Matthieu, thank you so much for joining me here at Ondo Summit 2026. And thank you so much for simplifying a lot of very dense and complicated topics.

Matthieu: Thank you very much.

Remy: Thank you.