Ondo Global Markets is finally here! For us, this has been years in the making.
Since announcing last year, we’ve seen many other tokenized stock offerings enter the market. But the big breakthrough hasn’t happened yet.
Why? Two things: accessibility and liquidity.
Many of the existing platforms are still walled gardens.
All users have to be onboarded with a single party and can't self-custody their tokens, take them off platform, or use them in DeFi protocols. In some cases these platforms are stepping stones to hopefully allow for some of these features in the future but they are not there today.
Ondo GM is different, since the tokens are freely transferable (outside the US and subject to certain jurisdictional restrictions) from day one, just like stablecoins.
Now, there are some other platforms that have also structured their tokens as freely transferable, like xStocks. However, where these tokens fall flat is on liquidity.
These tokens have relatively high friction mint and redeem processes, and rely on a small handful of market makers to hold large inventory of these tokens on various decentralized and centralized exchanges. Secondary market purchasers can generally only access what market makers are already holding in inventory, leading to limited liquidity and sometimes huge dislocations between token prices and underlying stock prices. This model of relying on prefunded liquidity venues simply does not scale to hundreds of equities.
GM solves this issue by enabling instant, atomic minting and burning of Ondo tokenized stocks & ETFs in exchange for stablecoins. Instant minting and burning is what allows for arbitragers to easily keep the prices on various secondary market venues in line with primary market prices.
Additionally, instant minting and burning allows for GM to separate trading and settlement, as is typically done in TradFi. For example, an eligible trader can put on an order to buy or sell some GM tokenized stock, and then subsequently that trader's order can be settled atomically and instantly. Only after a trade is agreed on is the stock token minted and the underlying stock purchased. Through this sequencing, GM is able to pass to users almost the same liquidity that it can access in underlying markets.
The magnitude of the difference in price impact from the two models is profound. For example, purchasing $200k of SPYx on Jupiter (the most liquid asset from xStocks on its most liquid venue) would entail more than 200 bps price impact. If the S&P 500 yields 10% a year on average, this would mean you lose ~2.5 months worth of returns swapping into the asset, and another ~2.5 months swapping out. By contrast, GM investors can mint $200k worth of SPYon for roughly a 1-3 bps price difference from TradFi markets (depending on market conditions).
After a lot of hard work we’re proud to be able to unveil this solution today, bringing highly accessible and liquid tokenized stocks to market.
Some caveats:
We’re rolling out gradually.
• Most tokens capped at $200k/trade (or $100k off-hours)
• Some low volatility tokens allow up to $1M
• Multiple trades can be submitted for larger orders
We’ll scale limits substantially as the system proves itself.
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Markets should be open, liquid, and global. With Ondo GM, that future is here.
@OndoFinance
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