SEC Closes Ondo Finance Probe Without Charges – End of Biden-Era Crypto Crackdown?

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has formally closed its multi-year investigation into Ondo Finance without filing any charges, marking another high-profile reversal of a crypto enforcement action that began under the Biden administration.

Ondo disclosed the decision in a blog announcement, confirming that the probe examined whether its tokenized real-world asset products complied with federal securities laws and whether its ONDO token itself qualified as a security.

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

The investigation began in 2024 during a period of heightened scrutiny of digital-asset firms and remained confidential until its resolution. The company said it fully cooperated throughout the process.

At the time the inquiry was opened, Ondo was emerging as one of the earliest and largest platforms for tokenized U.S. Treasuries and one of the few firms working toward large-scale tokenized access to publicly listed equities.

The company was also seeing rapid adoption from international investors, placing it squarely within the SEC’s enforcement focus during a period shaped by exchange bankruptcies, retail speculation, and regulatory uncertainty.

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

Since his takeover, the agency has moved to unwind several of the most aggressive crypto cases launched during the Biden years.

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

A similar enforcement case against Kraken, also alleging unregistered exchange and broker activities, was closed a month later with no fines, no admissions of wrongdoing, and no required business changes.

Also, in February, the SEC shut down its investigation into Robinhood’s crypto unit without taking enforcement action, and scrutiny of Uniswap Labs was quietly dropped as well.

Not all Biden-era crypto cases have disappeared. Criminal proceedings brought by the U.S. Department of Justice remain active in the Tornado Cash case.

Co-founder Roman Storm was convicted in August for conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business and now faces a potential prison sentence, while fellow co-founder Roman Semenov remains at large.

Although Treasury sanctions against the Tornado Cash protocol itself were lifted earlier this year following an appellate ruling, the individual prosecutions continue.

Ondo Brings Tokenized U.S. Stocks to Over 500 Million Investors Worldwide

Ondo’s regulatory clearance also comes as tokenization moves deeper into regulated financial markets.

In September, the company launched Ondo Global Markets, a platform offering tokenized access to more than 100 U.S. stocks and ETFs for eligible non-U.S. investors across Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America.

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

That international expansion accelerated in November when Liechtenstein’s Financial Market Authority granted Ondo approval to offer tokenized stocks and ETFs across the European Economic Area under the MiCA regulatory framework.

The approval positions the company to serve more than 500 million retail investors across 30 European countries through passported authorization.

At the infrastructure level, Ondo has also expanded its tokenized treasury-backed yield product, USDY, to the Stellar blockchain.

The integration, announced in September at the Stellar Meridian conference in Rio de Janeiro, allows Stellar users to access on-chain yield tied to U.S. government debt through a global payments-focused network.

Meanwhile, the SEC itself has begun publicly examining how tokenization could modernize traditional securities markets.

The agency’s Investor Advisory Committee is now studying how digital issuance, trading, and settlement could reshape equity infrastructure, a marked shift from the enforcement-first approach that dominated earlier policy.

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