Ondo Tokenizes BlackRock ETF and US Equities On-Chain Under SEC Regulatory Framework

Ondo just did something technically genuine: a third party tokenised a BlackRock ETF and a listed US stock on a public blockchain, inside the SEC's own custodial framework, with shareholder voting rights attached via Broadridge. That's not vaporware. The rails actually work.

But the question worth sitting with is: who benefits?

The pitch is access — ordinary people trading US equities around the clock, on-chain. The reality is a regulated custodial wrapper, meaning someone else still holds the underlying asset. You get a digital representation of a stock, not the stock. The custody problem doesn't disappear; it migrates to a new set of intermediaries dressed in blockchain clothing.

This is exactly what scepticism about RWA tokenisation predicts: genuine technical progress in service of the same concentrated ownership model, just with faster settlement.