SEC Closes Ondo Finance Probe With out Expenses – Finish of Biden-Period Crypto Crackdown?

The U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee has formally closed its multi-year investigation into Ondo Finance with out submitting any fees, marking one other high-profile reversal of a crypto enforcement motion that started beneath the Biden administration.

Ondo disclosed the choice in a weblog announcement, confirming that the probe examined whether or not its tokenized real-world asset merchandise complied with federal securities legal guidelines and whether or not its ONDO token itself certified as a safety.

Ondo Joins Coinbase, Kraken, and Co. as SEC Closes Key Crypto Investigations

The investigation started in 2024 throughout a interval of heightened scrutiny of digital-asset corporations and remained confidential till its decision. The corporate mentioned it absolutely cooperated all through the method.

On the time the inquiry was opened, Ondo was rising as one of many earliest and largest platforms for tokenized U.S. Treasuries and one of many few corporations working towards large-scale tokenized entry to publicly listed equities.

The corporate was additionally seeing fast adoption from worldwide traders, putting it squarely inside the SEC’s enforcement focus throughout a interval formed by alternate bankruptcies, retail hypothesis, and regulatory uncertainty.

The closure of the Ondo investigation comes as Washington signifies a broader recalibration of its crypto coverage posture following the appointment of Paul Atkins as SEC chair.

Since his takeover, the company has moved to unwind a number of of essentially the most aggressive crypto circumstances launched through the Biden years.

The SEC’s landmark lawsuit in opposition to Coinbase, filed in 2023 over allegations that the alternate operated as an unregistered securities platform, was dismissed with prejudice in February 2025.

An analogous enforcement case in opposition to Kraken, additionally alleging unregistered alternate and dealer actions, was closed a month later with no fines, no admissions of wrongdoing, and no required enterprise adjustments.

Additionally, in February, the SEC shut down its investigation into Robinhood’s crypto unit with out taking enforcement motion, and scrutiny of Uniswap Labs was quietly dropped as nicely.

Not all Biden-era crypto circumstances have disappeared. Legal proceedings introduced by the U.S. Division of Justice stay energetic within the Twister Money case.

Co-founder Roman Storm was convicted in August for conspiring to function an unlicensed money-transmitting enterprise and now faces a possible jail sentence, whereas fellow co-founder Roman Semenov stays at massive.

Though Treasury sanctions in opposition to the Twister Money protocol itself have been lifted earlier this yr following an appellate ruling, the person prosecutions proceed.

Ondo Brings Tokenized U.S. Shares to Over 500 Million Traders Worldwide

Ondo’s regulatory clearance additionally comes as tokenization strikes deeper into regulated monetary markets.

In September, the corporate launched Ondo International Markets, a platform providing tokenized entry to greater than 100 U.S. shares and ETFs for eligible non-U.S. traders throughout Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America.

The service runs on Ethereum and is increasing to BNB Chain, Solana, and its personal Ondo Chain, with tokenized securities backed one-to-one by underlying property held at U.S.-registered broker-dealers.

That worldwide growth accelerated in November when Liechtenstein’s Monetary Market Authority granted Ondo approval to supply tokenized shares and ETFs throughout the European Financial Space beneath the MiCA regulatory framework.

The approval positions the corporate to serve greater than 500 million retail traders throughout 30 European nations via passported authorization.

On the infrastructure degree, Ondo has additionally expanded its tokenized treasury-backed yield product, USDY, to the Stellar blockchain.

The mixing, introduced in September on the Stellar Meridian convention in Rio de Janeiro, permits Stellar customers to entry on-chain yield tied to U.S. authorities debt via a world payments-focused community.

In the meantime, the SEC itself has begun publicly analyzing how tokenization might modernize conventional securities markets.

The company’s Investor Advisory Committee is now finding out how digital issuance, buying and selling, and settlement might reshape fairness infrastructure, a marked shift from the enforcement-first method that dominated earlier coverage.

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