BlackRock's next big tokenization bet

“It's all great to have AI tell you what a perfect portfolio is, but if you can't access the assets, it doesn't really matter,” Staudt said. “Blockchain and tokenization is clearly going to open up funds, strategies, asset classes and jurisdictions that are not currently available for everyone”

For investors, that could mean moving beyond today's relatively fixed menu of stocks, bonds and funds toward portfolios assembled from a much broader set of building blocks.

For asset managers, it could make products from different firms easier to combine into a single portfolio, changing both how managers compete and how they work together.

As Staudt put it: “It's sort of taking democratization to the next level.”

Ondo had already hinted at an even more automated version of this future.

In a June interview, John Hoffman, then newly appointed head of portfolio products at Ondo, said tokenization was following a similar path to ETFs, only much faster.

He envisioned autonomous software continuously monitoring markets and allocating capital through professionally managed portfolios that adjust as conditions change.

“Our end state will be portfolios that are professionally managed, real-time and adjusting to market circumstances and data changes,” Hoffman said.

Getting there, however, will require more than tokenized stocks and funds. The industry first needs a broader universe of assets onchain, prime-brokerage infrastructure and asset-management strategies that can actually be executed natively on blockchain networks, Hoffman said.