Putting cash into crypto

Everyone is familiar with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin — digital assets with no physical equivalent that live on a decentralized ledger called the blockchain. But what about putting real-world assets on the blockchain? 

That’s the idea behind Mastercard and Ondo Finance's latest partnership, which will make institutional financial assets, such as funds that invest in U.S. Treasuries, available in digital form. Now, Ondo is joining Mastercard’s Multi-Token Network (MTN), a blockchain that links commercial banks with digital assets that can be transferred securely any minute of any day. 

Blockchain technology has the potential to transform the way businesses pay one another. Even in 2025, the complex work of settling the world’s business transactions sometimes requires waiting several days as banks communicate and sync their accounts with each other. Blockchains, on the other hand, can quickly process and settle transactions any time of day, any day of the week.

The Mastercard Newsroom recently chatted with Ian De Bode, Ondo’s chief strategy officer, about what this news means for users of MTN and how digitizing real-world assets opens up the blockchain to more participants. 

More banks and asset managers are tokenizing traditional financial assets, such as investment funds or even gold, allowing them to be traded on a blockchain. What’s the value of creating a digital copy of these assets?

De Bode: When you put a traditional asset, such as an investment security, on the blockchain, you enable transactions around the clock, and you can integrate it into smart contracts. You can do that without centralized counterparties. You’re not reliant on the infrastructure of traditional financial services, which do not work 24/7 and tend to be pretty siloed. 

What we're most known for is tokenizing U.S. Treasuries products. We have issued these assets in such a way that it enables free peer-to-peer transfers, no stock exchange needed. It pays out a yield very similar to the short-term Treasuries rate with all the investor protections that you would expect in traditional finance. 

Ondo’s product sounds very much like the kind of exchange-traded fund, or ETF, that personal investors might buy to earn some yield on their savings with little risk. How does a blockchain-enabled version differ?

De Bode:  While comparing it to a Treasury ETF is fair, I would think of it more like a money market fund — a means for institutions to invest cash short-term — that we've put on the blockchain. Because our assets live on a blockchain and not some centralized exchange, they can move more freely. If you're ever looking to use it as collateral on the blockchain, you can do that across a wide variety of applications. You're not just locked into one specific provider the way you would be if, for example, you want to borrow against your holdings in a brokerage account. From the perspective of crypto investors, the blockchain is a challenging place to get access to normal Treasury yields.

How do businesses or institutions benefit from your products becoming available on the Multi-Token Network?

De Bode: Some institutions prefer to keep all of their assets with traditional banking, but if they want to access the blockchain with, say, the cash they have at their bank, they run into problems. Bank infrastructure doesn't operate 24/7. The blockchain does. For time-sensitive transactions, such as overnight borrowing, that matters. You're running into liquidity mismatches between your blockchain infrastructure and your settlement infrastructure.

The beauty of the Multi-Token Network is that it operates 24/7, so by connecting our products to it, customers can use the traditional banking they feel comfortable with but access a blockchain financial product much more simply. If someone wants to then take their digital assets and redeem them for cash, that's something that the MTN also easily enables. What makes this partnership meaningful is that it enables settlements across various banks round the clock, on traditional financial rails and for many institutions.

What developments do you expect to see for crypto and blockchain in 2025? 

De Bode: I expect investment vehicles to move to blockchain a lot faster than people think. My bold prediction is that we will see tokenized stocks, ETFs and the ability to borrow against them on-chain. A lot of people right now are just focused on crypto, stablecoins, maybe tokenized Treasuries. I actually think other deeply liquid assets that are readily available on traditional exchanges are going to find their way onto public blockchains significantly faster than many people believe.