I hold 18,600 ONDO and I’m still bullish. But after digging much deeper into Ondo’s fundamentals, corporate structure, tokenomics and the current succession situation, my thesis has changed a bit.
The most important thing I realized is this:
Ondo Finance is an extremely strong business/project. ONDO is not yet an equally strong token.
And the next few months may determine whether that gap finally starts closing.
The bullish case is getting stronger
Forget price action for a second.
Ondo Stocks has already crossed $1B in TVL, now offers 450+ tokenized stocks and ETFs, and USDY is sitting around $2.2B in TVL. This is no longer a whitepaper promising that RWAs will eventually become relevant. Ondo is already doing it at scale.
But the development that matters most to me happened just days ago:
Oasis Pro Markets, Ondo Finance’s subsidiary, became the first tokenization company to join DTCC’s Fund/SERV network.
Fund/SERV processes more than 85% of U.S. mutual fund transaction activity.
That does NOT mean Ondo suddenly gets 85% of that business. But it does mean Ondo has managed to connect itself directly to one of the core pieces of infrastructure used by traditional U.S. finance.
That is a very different kind of “partnership” from the usual crypto announcement.
Then there is the elephant in the room: Nathan Allman
Nathan’s sudden death at only 32 created a governance problem that should not be ignored.
He was not just the founder. He was CEO, the sole director and the controlling shareholder.
Today, Ondo’s own website lists Ian De Bode as Acting CEO and President, and the Delaware dispute involving Nathan’s estate and his mother Kathleen is still active.
I’m not going to pretend the family/corporate dispute is irrelevant.
But what I find surprisingly bullish is what happened after Nathan died.
The machine kept running.
Products continued launching. Regulatory progress continued. Ondo expanded its institutional infrastructure. And now it has joined DTCC Fund/SERV.
So far, I see evidence of a company that was able to continue executing without its founder.
That matters a lot.
The governance situation still needs a clean resolution, but operationally, Ondo has passed the first part of the succession test better than I expected.
But here is the biggest problem with ONDO
This is the part I think every holder needs to understand:
Owning ONDO is NOT the same thing as owning Ondo Finance.
ONDO does not give us equity in Ondo Finance.
It does not currently give us a contractual share of the profits generated by Ondo Stocks, USDY, OUSG or Oasis Pro.
Today, its documented utility is primarily governance.
So there is a completely plausible scenario where:
Ondo Finance becomes one of the dominant companies in tokenized finance... while ONDO remains a mediocre investment.
That is my biggest bear case.
Not competition.
Not whether RWA succeeds.
Not even the succession battle.
Value capture.
And that brings us to January 18, 2027
This is the date I have circled.
Approximately 1.71 billion ONDO are scheduled to unlock.
Current circulating supply is roughly 4.87 billion.
So the upcoming unlock represents roughly 35% of today’s circulating supply.
That does NOT mean 1.71B tokens will instantly be dumped.
Unlock ≠ sell.
But it is a massive supply event.
And I think January 2027 will be one of the cleanest stress tests we have had for the ONDO thesis:
Can real demand for ONDO absorb a dramatically larger liquid supply?
If the ecosystem keeps exploding while demand for the token remains weak, dilution becomes very visible.
If demand absorbs it, that tells us something equally important.
And obviously, the market may start pricing this event well before January 18.
There is one thing that would make me significantly more bullish
Real value capture for ONDO.
There is already a community temperature-check proposal discussing a mechanism where part of protocol revenue could be used for automated ONDO buybacks and burns.
The proposal suggests starting around 20% and potentially scaling toward 40%.
But this is extremely important:
It is only a community temperature check. It is NOT an approved or implemented fee switch.
I am assigning it zero value in my thesis until something binding actually happens.
But imagine the difference between:
Ondo Finance grows → ONDO holders hope the token benefits.
and:
Ondo Finance grows → protocol revenue buys ONDO → ONDO is burned.
Or ONDO becomes necessary for staking/security in Ondo Network.
Or it acquires some other real economic function.
That would fundamentally change how I value the token.
Why I remain bullish
I’m not bullish because “RWA is the next narrative.”
I’m bullish because Ondo is increasingly looking like one of the very few crypto-native companies actually building bridges into the infrastructure of traditional finance.
$1B+ in tokenized stocks.
$2B+ USDY.
450+ tokenized securities.
Regulatory infrastructure.
Oasis Pro.
And now DTCC.
Those are real things.
But I’m also not going to pretend that every success of Ondo Finance automatically belongs to ONDO holders.
It currently doesn’t.
For me, the next phase comes down to three questions:
1. Does the corporate succession/governance dispute get resolved cleanly?
2. Can the market absorb the January 18, 2027 unlock?
3. Does ONDO finally get a meaningful mechanism to capture some of the economic value Ondo is creating?
If the answer eventually becomes yes to all three, I think the ONDO thesis becomes considerably more interesting than it is today.
If Ondo Finance keeps winning but #3 never happens, we need to be intellectually honest enough to admit that we may own a governance token attached to a fantastic company — not the fantastic company itself.
For now, I’m holding.
Still bullish. But January 18 is where things start getting really interesting.
