Ondo Finance has tapped John Hoffman, the former head of Invesco's ETF business, to lead its push into onchain investment products. Hoffman will oversee the company's shift from tokenizing individual assets to building full investment portfolios and strategies directly on blockchain.
Why the hire matters
The move signals a broader ambition inside the crypto-finance niche: creating investment vehicles that live entirely on distributed ledgers, not just wrapping existing securities in tokens. Hoffman spent years at Invesco, where he managed the firm's exchange-traded fund lineup — one of the biggest in the industry. His job now is to bring that same product-construction discipline to onchain markets.
Ondo has already worked on tokenized versions of assets like U.S. Treasuries. But Hoffman's mandate goes further. He's expected to design multi-asset portfolios, yield strategies, and structured products that execute onchain without a traditional custodian or fund administrator in the middle.
From single assets to full portfolios
Tokenizing a single bond or stock is one thing. Building a diversified portfolio that trades itself onchain is another. That's the gap Ondo wants to close. Hoffman's experience launching and managing ETF products — which bundle assets into a single tradeable share — is directly relevant. The company is essentially trying to do for blockchain-based funds what ETF providers did for mutual funds two decades ago: make them cheap, transparent, and tradeable intraday.
Ondo didn't disclose specific products or timelines. But the hiring suggests the firm is moving past the proof-of-concept stage. It now plans to compete with both traditional asset managers and other crypto-native platforms that offer tokenized funds.
Hoffman will start immediately. Ondo has not announced a launch date for any new portfolio product, but industry watchers expect the company to reveal its first onchain fund lineup in the coming months. The hire also raises the question of whether more traditional finance executives will follow Hoffman into the tokenization space — a trend that could accelerate as regulatory clarity improves.
