Ondo Finance, with 60% market share, partners SBI to tokenize Japanese stocks

SBI Group, the Japanese financial conglomerate with more than $238 billion in total assets, has partnered with Ondo Finance to tokenize Japanese equities and settle transactions using the group's JPYSC yen stablecoin, the companies said Thursday.

"Japan is one of the most sophisticated capital markets in the world, and SBI sits at the center of it," Ian De Bode, chief executive officer of Ondo Finance, said in the announcement. "This collaboration creates a path to bring Japanese assets onchain and to connect Japan with the global tokenized economy."

Under the agreement, Ondo Global Markets (BVI) Limited will issue tokenized financial products linked to Japan, with distribution across SBI's ecosystem spanning securities, asset management, banking and insurance. SBI's JPYSC stablecoin, the first trust bank-backed yen stablecoin launched on June 24, will serve as the settlement and collateral layer for the products. Ondo Finance controls nearly 60% of the global tokenized equity market, according to industry data.

The partnership connects one of Asia's largest financial markets to blockchain infrastructure through a yen-denominated settlement layer, removing foreign-exchange friction for Japanese investors. The companies did not disclose a launch date or the first assets planned for tokenization.

How the partnership works

SBI isn't a crypto-native startup experimenting with tokenization. It's a financial services empire with more than $238 billion in total assets, operating one of Japan's largest online brokerages, SBI Securities, giving it direct access to millions of retail investors. Stablecoins are digital tokens designed to maintain a fixed value against a reference asset — in this case, the Japanese yen — and are typically backed by reserves held by a regulated issuer. Most tokenized asset experiments globally have relied on US dollar stablecoins like USDC or USDT. Building this infrastructure on a yen-denominated stablecoin backed by a trust bank removes the FX friction for Japanese investors.

Yoshitaka Kitao, SBI Holdings' representative director, chairman, president and CEO, described Ondo as a long-term partner for the group's digital asset ambitions. "Ondo Finance has established itself as a global leader in the tokenization of real-world assets and is at the forefront of the tokenized equities market," Kitao said. "We believe Ondo will be a key strategic partner as SBI Group forms a global corridor for digital assets."

A growing onchain equities pipeline

The Ondo partnership follows SBI Global Asset Management's launch of a tokenized Japanese equity fund on Solana with DigiFT, a regulated real-world asset exchange, on July 15. The SBI Japan High Dividend Equity Strategy Token, known as the JX token, gives accredited and institutional investors blockchain-based access to a high-dividend Japanese equity strategy managed by SBI Asset Management Co.

While the JX token focuses on a managed equity strategy for qualified investors, the Ondo agreement covers tokenized financial products, distribution through SBI's ecosystem and JPYSC integration. Together, the two initiatives show SBI is testing separate routes for bringing Japanese securities and yen-based settlement onto public blockchain networks.

ONDO, the governance token of Ondo Finance, traded at about $0.39, up roughly 17% over 24 hours and 23% over the prior seven days, with a circulating market cap near $1.89 billion, according to CoinGecko data as of 14:31 UTC. Bitcoin was not moving comparably over the same window, indicating the gain was asset-specific.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.