Mirae Asset Global Investments has signed a memorandum of understanding with Ondo Finance to build out tokenized exchange-traded funds, the two firms confirmed on June 16, 2026. The deal puts one of the largest asset managers outside the US, with roughly $721 billion under management, behind a plan to move its ETF lineup onto public blockchains.
The agreement was reported by Cointelegraph and covered by UPI the same day. It is an MOU rather than a finished product, so the structure will be worked out over the coming quarters. The direction is clear enough: Mirae intends to tokenize US-listed ETFs through its American subsidiary, Global X, and use Ondo's infrastructure to do it.
A $721B manager picks an onchain partner
Global X is the brand most US investors will recognize here. It runs a large catalog of thematic and income ETFs and, per the Korea Times, Mirae's global ETF assets crossed $263.7 billion earlier this month. Tokenizing that kind of lineup is a different scale of commitment than the pilot tokens and single-fund experiments that have defined real-world asset projects so far.
Ondo Finance has spent the past year wiring traditional securities into crypto wallets. Its Global Markets product already lists tokenized US stocks and ETFs across several chains, and other distributors have plugged into it. The Mirae deal adds something the existing pipeline mostly lacked: an asset manager bringing its own funds to the table rather than a third party wrapping someone else's shares.
The first concrete deliverable named in the announcement is a tokenized share class of Hong Kong's first covered-call ETF, targeted for the third quarter of 2026. The firms also flagged broader cooperation on fund tokenization, onchain asset-management infrastructure, and real-world asset products for global investors.
The wrapper changes, the fund does not
A tokenized ETF share class is the same underlying fund with a different ownership record. Instead of sitting in a brokerage account tracked by a transfer agent, the share is represented as a token that settles on a blockchain. The holdings, the manager, and the regulatory wrapper stay the same. The plumbing underneath changes.
That distinction matters because the appeal is operational, not speculative. Onchain settlement runs continuously and clears in minutes rather than the T+1 cycle that still governs most US securities. A token can move between wallets without a custodian batching trades at the end of the day. For an income product like a covered-call ETF, where investors care about steady distributions, programmable settlement and round-the-clock transfer are the selling points, not a bet on price.
The risk sits in the same place. A tokenized share is only as sound as the legal claim behind it and the entity holding the real assets. If the issuer or its custodian fails, owning a token does not change where you stand in line. This is the same counterparty exposure that separates custodial products from self-custody options in the card world: holding the keys to a token is not the same as holding the asset it points to.
Tokenized funds inch toward everyday wallets
For crypto users, the more interesting angle is where these tokens end up. Ondo's distribution already reaches consumer wallets, and tokenized ETFs settle on the same rails as the stablecoins people increasingly park and spend. Once a yield-bearing fund share lives in the same wallet as a spending balance, the gap between investing and transacting narrows.
That convergence is why the RWA trend keeps drawing in payment infrastructure. The companies issuing tokenized treasuries and funds are building toward wallets that hold both an income asset and a spendable balance, with conversion happening onchain. It is still early, and most tokenized ETFs today are gated to qualified or non-US investors. But a manager the size of Mirae committing its Global X catalog signals that the supply side is no longer just crypto-native startups.
For now, the practical takeaway is narrow. This is an MOU with one named product on a Q3 timeline, not a live retail launch. The detail worth tracking is whether the Hong Kong covered-call share class ships on schedule and which chains Ondo uses to distribute it, because those choices will say more about real adoption than the headline AUM figure.
Overview
Mirae Asset, a global manager with about $721 billion in assets, signed an MOU with Ondo Finance on June 16, 2026 to tokenize its US-listed ETFs through Global X, whose global ETF assets recently passed $263.7 billion. The first planned product is a tokenized share class of Hong Kong's first covered-call ETF, targeted for Q3 2026. The fund itself does not change; the ownership record moves onchain, bringing continuous settlement and the same counterparty risk that has always applied to wrapped assets.
