Exclusive: Ondo and Pantera Capital earmark $250 million for real-world asset tokenization
Why it matters: Tokenizing treasuries, stocks, and other assets is now the second hottest sector in crypto as the regulatory environment eases.
Context: RWA tokenization grew from $5 billion in 2022 to over $24 billion by June 2025, according to data from Redstone — making it the second fastest-growing sector behind stablecoins, which is considered a kind of tokenization itself.
Ondo, which also has backing from Pantera, has a focus on the space.
Driving the news: Dubbed Ondo Catalyst, the $250 million will be spent on both equity stakes and project tokens, Ondo chief strategy officer Ian De Bode says.
Crypto and traditional finance have been developing on parallel, but separate infrastructure in recent years. That's created gaps as the two seek to combine.
"Traditional financial markets don't work 24/7 — but crypto markets do," says De Bode. "The types of services that you would want to see on chain ... requires a little bit of rewiring of how some of these DeFi protocols are built."
Between the lines: Catalyst also aims to find projects that will make on-chain versions of the asset more attractive to users, compared to the underlying one.
"Fundamentally, at some point, the question is going to be 'why would I hold my asset on chain versus off chain in a brokerage account?'" asks De Bode. "That ecosystem of applications needs to get built."
De Bode believes on-chain brokerage accounts could rebalance automatically 24/7, becoming more real-time than their older counterparts.
The bottom line: Coinbase, Robinhood, and Republic are all entering the tokenization fray — with some hoping the blockchain can eventually help cut out financial middlemen.
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