Ondo Finance appoints former CFO of Blockchain.com as head of finance

Ondo Finance appoints former Blockchain.com executive as chief financial officer

Ondo Finance has appointed former Blockchain.com executive Adam Schlisman as chief financial officer. As the tokenized asset company expands its institutional business, another veteran of Wall Street and crypto finance has joined its team.

Summary

Ondo Finance has appointed Adam Schlisman, former chief financial officer of Blockchain.com, as its new chief financial officer. Schlisman's addition comes as the tokenized asset platform continues to expand its institutional operations and product line. The appointment follows recent recruitments for leadership and product positions, including the addition of former Invesco executive John Hoffman. Ondo continues to grow its tokenized markets business through Ondo Network, Ondo Perps and Ondo Global Markets.

According to a press release issued by the company, Schlisman will be responsible for the financial operations of Ondo Finance after joining global macro hedge fund Monashee Investment Management as chief financial officer. His appointment comes as the company continues to build products and infrastructure for tokenized capital markets.

Ondo Finance adds another senior executive

Before joining Monashee, Schlisman served as chief financial officer for several years at Blockchain.com, responsible for finance, Treasury and risk management during a period of rapid expansion. In an earlier career, he spent nearly a decade at Graham Capital Management, working in portfolio management and risk-related positions.

Founded in 2021 by former Goldman Sachs executives, Ondo has grown into one of the largest tokenized real-world asset platforms. The company provides blockchain-based U.S. Treasury bonds, tokenized stocks and other financial products, and according to a press release, its platform has total assets of more than $3.5 billion.

Commenting on the appointment, Schlisman said that Ondo has entered a stage where institutional adoption is accelerating across multiple business lines. "Ondo has reached the turning point every financial leader is looking for," Schlisman said in an emailed comment. "Ondo Stocks 'total locked value exceeding $1 billion, Ondo Perps' growth and partnerships with traditional market infrastructure providers such as DTCC all point in the same direction: the tokenized market is moving from early adoption to institutional scale. My responsibility is to build a financial operation system that can expand simultaneously."

His comments referred to a number of initiatives the company has launched in recent months, including Ondo Stocks, the Ondo Perps derivatives platform, and partnerships with mature financial market infrastructure providers.

Ondo's institutional expansion continues to advance

Schlisman's addition continues a series of executive appointments announced this year, and Ondo is constantly enriching its leadership team. In June, the company appointed former Grayscale and Invesco executive John Hoffman as managing director and product portfolio leader. Hoffman's mission is to work with asset managers to develop a tokenized investment portfolio, thereby further expanding Ondo's product line beyond individual tokenized treasury bonds products and stocks.

The leadership expansion follows the unexpected death in May of Ondo founder Nathan Allman. Long-time president Ian De Bode took over as CEO, and the company said at the time that its strategy and product roadmap would continue to advance without being affected. Under De Bode's leadership, Ondo continues to launch new products and infrastructure while seeking institutional cooperation in traditional finance and digital assets.

Ondo Network and tokenization market remain core

Last month, Ondo replaced the previously announced Ondo Chain with Ondo Network. Ondo Network is an execution layer designed to combine centralized exchange-like trading speeds with self-custody and on-chain clearing. The company said the redesign stemmed from interactions with potential users during the development of Ondo Perps, and the results showed that execution speed is a greater obstacle for institutional transactions than settlement capabilities. Instead of executing and settling every transaction on a public blockchain, the network processes transactions in a trusted execution environment, and then settles asset transfers on public chains such as Ethereum. Ondo Perps becomes the first app launched on the new infrastructure, allowing traders outside the United States to use tokenized real-world assets as collateral to trade perpetual contracts linked to stocks and commodities.

In addition, Oasis Pro Markets, Ondo's broker-dealer subsidiary registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, has also received an extended license from FINRA to cover a variety of securities activities, establishing a regulated infrastructure for future launches of tokenized securities products in the United States, but individual products still need to meet separate regulatory requirements.

Tokenized assets attract traditional financial talent

Schlisman's appointment comes at a time when competition in the tokenized real-world asset space continues to attract senior executives from Wall Street and the crypto industry. Banks, asset management companies and digital asset companies are increasingly launching blockchain-based treasury bonds, money market funds, private equity products and stocks as they test tokenized financial infrastructure. In addition to treasury bonds products OUSG and USDY, Ondo has also expanded to tokenized stocks through Ondo Global Markets, whose total locked value has exceeded US$1 billion. The platform supports Solana, Ethereum and BNB Chain, and integrates with exchanges, wallets and custodians such as Binance, Bitget, MetaMask, Ledger and www.example.com. Blockchain.com