Tokenization may be the crypto equivalent of the ETF, with adoption rising faster than earlier crypto-native breakthroughs. In an interview with The Block, Ondo Finance Head of Product Portfolios John Hoffman said the skepticism and hesitation surrounding tokenization today resemble the early days of exchange-traded funds, when an emerging technology eventually changed market structure and expanded access to markets.

Why Tokenization Resembles the Early ETF Market

Hoffman pointed to the speed at which different products have reached billion-dollar milestones. According to his comparison, stablecoins took three years, tokenized Treasuries took 18 months, tokenized stocks took six months, and Ondo Stocks took eight months.

In a post shared by Ondo Finance on X on August 21, 2026, the company said tokenization is having its ETF moment. The post linked to Hoffman’s interview with The Block and included the message: “We’re, in a lot of ways, going back in time, seeing the…” — Ondo Finance (@Ondo) August 21, 2026

Hoffman’s comparison centered on the idea that tokenization, like ETFs before it, still needs the right combination of product design and market structure. He said the ETF market eventually became a backbone of modern finance after clear regulations, intermediary support, portfolio-construction examples, and broad investor adoption developed over time. The historical arc behind that analogy is well documented: the first US-listed ETF, the SPDR S&P 500 trust from State Street, began trading in 1993 and drew comparable institutional hesitation in its early years before the format grew into a multi-trillion-dollar segment of global asset management.

Faster Change in Financial Instruments

Hoffman said faster adoption can benefit both investors and large institutions by allowing them to use global systems more efficiently, including trading, collateral management, and settlement in stablecoins. He added that exchanges, custodians, and developers may view tokenization as an opportunity to connect existing infrastructure with tokenized equities and Treasuries. That opening is already visible among large asset managers: BlackRock launched a tokenized US dollar institutional fund on Ethereum with Securitize in 2024, and Franklin Templeton runs an on-chain government money market fund across public blockchains that include Stellar and Polygon, two of the networks Hoffman named.

The broader trend is linked to the growth of real-world assets, an area tracked by platforms such as DefiLlama and RWA.xyz. Hoffman said platforms including Ethereum, Stellar, and Polygon are seeking to attract new issuers and develop securities rails.

Source: Ondo Finance

Regulatory Clarity as a Growth Driver

Hoffman also highlighted the gradual development of regulatory frameworks for tokenized assets in the United States. He said those rules could complement the distributed-ledger securities regimes already in place in the European Union and the United Kingdom and could help drive further issuance. Those regimes include the EU’s DLT Pilot Regime, in force since March 2023, and the UK’s Digital Securities Sandbox operated by the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority.

He identified additional potential catalysts as broker-dealer licenses, secondary-market liquidity, cross-chain standardization, and reserve validation.

Source: Ondo Finance

Hoffman said a successful tokenization process could extend the ETF model and create “programmable” 24/7 markets that go beyond the dollar while still maintaining regulation, compatibility, and high liquidity for market participants.