Ondo Finance hires former Invesco ETF chief to build onchain investment products

Ondo Finance ONDO$0.3506 has hired former Invesco ETF executive and Grayscale managing director John Hoffman to expand its tokenized investment products beyond stocks and Treasury notes.

Hoffman joins the firm as managing director and head of product portfolios after serving as head of distribution and partnerships at Grayscale Investments, best known for its digital asset funds. Before that, he spent nearly two decades at $2.5 trillion asset manager Invesco, where he most recently led the firm's ETF and index strategies business in the Americas.

His focus will be building and distributing tokenized portfolios, including investment baskets developed with asset managers and strategies built around Ondo's existing products.

The hire points to Ondo's plans to move beyond tokenized versions of individual assets toward managed investment products on blockchain rails.

"Our next step is building the world's most trusted platform for intelligently managed, onchain investment portfolios," Hoffman told CoinDesk in an interview.

"It took 30 years for ETFs to go from niche product to the default vehicle," he said. "Onchain finance will compress that timeline dramatically. The infrastructure is here and the next generation of portfolio products will be built onchain."

The move comes as tokenization gains traction across Wall Street and crypto markets. The technology creates blockchain-based versions of traditional assets such as stocks, bonds and funds. Supporters say it can reduce settlement times, keep markets open around the clock and make assets easier to move between trading venues. BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity and JPMorgan are among the financial firms that have launched or tested tokenized products.

The market for tokenized assets has nearly tripled in a year, surpassing $30 billion, RWA.xyz data shows. Citi has projected tokenized assets could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030, while a joint report from Boston Consulting Group and Ripple estimated the market could grow to $18.9 trillion by 2033.

Ondo has been one of the biggest crypto-native players in the sector. The company first gained traction with tokenized Treasury products OUSG and USDY, which provide investors with blockchain-based exposure to U.S. government debt and other yield-bearing assets.

More recently, the company expanded into tokenized equities through Ondo Global Markets, which the company says has surpassed $1 billion in total value locked across more than 250 stocks and ETFs.