John Hoffman, the newly appointed head of portfolio products at Ondo Finance, compared the rise of tokenized assets to the early stages of the exchange-traded fund industry. He argued that the convergence of blockchain and artificial intelligence will drive the next phase of growth in capital markets.
Hoffman, who previously worked at Invesco and Grayscale, said in a CoinDesk interview that the tokenized asset market has grown to more than $33 billion. He noted that forecasts from Citi and Boston Consulting Group with Ripple project the sector could reach trillions of dollars by 2030 or 2033.
The executive drew parallels to ETFs, which expanded from roughly $200 billion in assets in the early 2000s to nearly $20 trillion today. Hoffman stated that tokenization represents the digitization of capital markets and will accelerate faster than the ETF boom.
Hoffman described a future in which AI agents autonomously buy, sell and allocate capital using tokenized products. He said Ondo Finance is building toward this by offering tokenized U.S. Treasury products and planning expansions into stocks, ETFs and perpetual futures.
"The future of markets are onchain," Hoffman said. The firm aims to become a platform for professionally managed, onchain investment portfolios that adjust in real time.
