Ondo Perps Launches Spot Trading for Tokenized Stocks and ETFs

Ondo Finance’s perpetual futures arm has quietly introduced a capability that traditional finance has struggled to perfect for decades: a single platform for buying an asset and hedging it without the need to move funds between different services.

On September 28, Ondo Perps launched spot trading for 12 tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). This allows users to acquire tokenized U.S. equities at market prices via its central limit order book. The key innovation is that these newly purchased tokens can be immediately used as collateral for perpetual futures positions on the same platform.

This integration addresses a long-standing frustration for sophisticated cryptocurrency traders. Executing a basis trade, which involves going long on a spot asset while simultaneously shorting its perpetual contract, traditionally demanded accounts on multiple platforms, separate margin pools, and the inherent counterparty risk of distributing capital across various exchanges.

Ondo Perps streamlines this process into a unified workflow. Traders can now purchase a tokenized stock, use it as margin, and open a short perpetual position against it, all without transferring assets between different systems.

Consequently, delta-neutral strategies have become significantly more accessible. Traders who hold a long spot position and short the corresponding perpetual can capitalize on positive funding rates when perpetual contracts trade at a premium to the spot price. Maintaining both legs of the trade on a single platform mitigates the risk of a margin call on one side triggering a liquidation while the other position remains untouched on a separate exchange.

The tokenized assets themselves are backed by underlying securities held by U.S. broker-dealers or trust companies, adding a layer of institutional-grade custody to what is fundamentally a decentralized finance (DeFi) product.

The spot trading feature builds upon infrastructure that Ondo Perps rolled out in July 2026, when it introduced 24/7 perpetual futures trading for U.S. equities, ETFs, and commodities, with leverage up to 20x. This initial offering generated over $8 billion in cumulative platform volume, with open interest peaks reaching tens of millions of dollars.

To encourage adoption, Ondo is waiving trading fees for the first 30 days following the launch of the spot feature.

A significant limitation exists: access to tokenized asset trading is restricted to eligible non-U.S. users and jurisdictions. U.S. securities law remains a formidable obstacle in the tokenization landscape, and Ondo has chosen to implement geo-fencing rather than attempt to navigate the complex regulatory environment of offering tokenized U.S. stocks to American residents.

What distinguishes Ondo Perps from many other real-world asset (RWA) competitors is its composability. Numerous tokenization projects conclude at the issuance stage, creating a digital representation of a traditional asset without further development. Ondo, however, is constructing the trading infrastructure around these assets, enabling them to function as productive collateral rather than remaining idle in a wallet.

A tokenized stock that can simultaneously serve as a spot holding, a margin asset, and one component of a derivatives trade represents a significant departure from simply owning shares in a brokerage account.

However, the risk assessment is not entirely one-sided. Tokenized assets are subject to the regulatory uncertainties of their underlying securities, the smart contract risks inherent in their blockchain infrastructure, and the oracle risks associated with the price feeds connecting them to real-world markets. Furthermore, a platform that combines spot and leveraged derivatives concentrates risk; if the system’s margin engine malfunctions, both sides of a trader’s position are simultaneously exposed.