Ondo and Pantera plan $250 million investment into RWA projects: Axios

Ondo Finance and Pantera Capital plan to invest $250 million in real-world asset projects, according to a report from Axios .

"The $250 million will be spent on both equity stakes and project tokens," Ondo's Chief Strategy Officer Ian De Bode told Axios.

Ondo and Pantera would like to bring traditional financial markets and the digital assets sector more closely together, along with unleashing 24/7 trading of real-world assets (RWAs), according to the report.

This new initiative will grow Ondo's existing exposure to tokenized RWAs. Earlier this year, Ondo Finance launched a platform to give onchain exposure to U.S. securities such as stocks, bonds, and exchange-traded funds.

"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?'" De Bode asked in his interview with Axios.

The push to offer users the ability to trade tokenized equities — including potentially shares of private companies — grabbed headlines this week after Robinhood announced it would allow EU users to acquire tokenized shares of OpenAI and SpaceX. OpenAI later clarified it did not support Robinhood’s initiative. In fact, the digital tokens Robinhood offered are derivatives based on OpenAI’s valuation, rather than actual tokenized shares of the company.

Other key players interested in, or involved in, the tokenization of RWAs like equities include Injective, Plume Network, Backed, and Republic. Coinbase and Kraken are also keen to offer users tokenized stocks like Tesla and Apple.