Hong Kong — Tokenization is gaining ground, but its success depends less on market hype and more on actual utility, say executives at Ondo Finance and Securitize.
“There is no shortage of businesses, issuers and corporations interested in tokenization,” said Graham Ferguson, head of ecosystem at Securitize, during a panel discussion at Consensus Hong Kong. “But it’s up to us to figure out how to distribute these on-chain assets through exchanges in a globally compliant and regulatory-friendly way.”
Ferguson emphasized that despite the great interest from the institutional side, distribution and compliance remain the bottlenecks. “The biggest issue we face is communicating with exchanges and DeFi protocols about the requirements needed to meet our obligations as a regulated entity,” he said.
Securitize has partnered with companies such as BlackRock to tokenize real-world assets, including US Treasury funds. BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, launched in 2024, now holds over $2.2 billion in assets, making it the largest tokenized Treasury fund on the market.
Ondo Finance, which also focuses on tokenized Treasuries and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), has a total value locked (TVL) of around $2 billion, according to data from rwa.xzy. Min Lin, Ondo’s general manager of global expansion, said tokenized Treasuries represent only a fraction of the potential market today.
Both speakers emphasized that the next phase of tokenization will be determined by what users can actually do with tokenized assets. Ondo recently enabled the use of tokenized stocks and ETFs as margin collateral in DeFi perpetuals – a first, Lin said.
“It brings a lot more capital efficiency in terms of the utility of these token assets,” he added.
Ferguson agreed, arguing that technological advantages such as programmable compliance and rapid settlement are not enough on their own. “Public services are number one by far,” he said. “That’s what will guide the next phase.”
