Milk Road · Oct 16, 2026 · 41m · 34m saved
With John Hoffman, Managing Director at Ondo Finance
John Hoffman, Managing Director at Ondo Finance, told John Gillen on Milk Road that Ondo's tokenized stocks reached $1 billion in eight months, a mark that took stablecoins about three years.
Stablecoins are the asset most of the crypto industry points to as proof that traditional finance is moving onto blockchains. John argues tokenized stocks and funds are moving faster.
"Stable coins ... three years to reach a billion in TVL, tokenized treasuries did that in about 18 months. On stocks ... we reached that milestone in eight months."
John spent nearly 20 years at Invesco building its exchange-traded fund business and later led distribution at Grayscale, so he reads tokenization through the history of ETFs.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 41 minutes of audio, 7 minutes of reading.
Here are the 6 takeaways that matter.
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Key Takeaways
Ondo's tokenized stocks reached $1B in 8 months, against about 3 years for stablecoins
Anyone with a wallet and an internet connection can buy a tokenized asset, a market of 8 billion people
BlackRock chose the holdings and weights for three of Ondo's seven new portfolio tokens
John calls the launch "the SPY moment for the tokenization market"
A tokenized Apple share is an equity-linked note, not the stock itself
Most other issuers of tokenized stocks have copied the collateral model Ondo started
Ondo has US licenses but will not launch domestically until it can match its overseas product
1. Faster Than Stablecoins
John Gillen opened with the comparison: Ondo's tokenized stocks reached $1 billion in value in under eight months, against about 18 months for Ondo's tokenized Treasuries and roughly three years for stablecoins. John Hoffman gave two reasons for the speed.
Tokenized assets can reach anyone with a wallet, while traditional finance is split by country
"Anyone with an internet connection and a wallet can access this ... really it's 8 billion people, which is different than how traditional finance has been built, which is very much driven by local markets, local regulation." — John Hoffman
The second is generational. John expects a large transfer of wealth to younger investors who already trust blockchain-based technology.
"$85 trillion is going to transition from Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z over the next 7 to 10 years and those generations ... are more digitally native ... they trust the technology, they understand the technology." — John Hoffman
