Back to Glossary
General TradingI
IOU
An informal acknowledgment of debt, standing for 'I Owe You.' In crypto and DeFi, IOUs are tokenized representations of assets on a different blockchain, representing a claim on the underlying asset.
Example
“For example, on some decentralized exchanges, you might trade a wrapped version of Bitcoin (an IOU token) on the Ethereum network that represents a claim on actual BTC held in custody.”