According to Blockworks, Ian De Bode has left his position as head of digital assets at McKinsey & Company to join real-world asset startup Ondo Finance as chief strategy officer. This move marks the latest hire from a major traditional finance institution for Ondo. The company's founder and CEO, Nathan Allman, previously worked on Goldman Sachs' digital assets team. Ondo has also recently hired Goldman's former head of digital asset compliance as its chief risk and compliance officer, and its vice president of partnerships, Kate Wheeler, was a former vice president at BlackRock.
De Bode expressed his belief in the potential of digital assets to create an open and accessible financial system and praised Ondo as the team to achieve this goal. Allman commended De Bode's outstanding track record and forward-thinking approach to onchain finance. Ondo specializes in the tokenization of real-world assets, such as its USDY stablecoin, which pays out yield secured by US Treasurys. The company has also invested $95 million of the backing behind its OUSG US Treasury tokens in BlackRock's on-chain money market fund, BUIDL.
In other news, Canadian bitcoin mining company Bitfarms announced a CEO transition, with current president and CEO L. Geoffrey Morphy set to depart the firm following a search for his replacement by the board of directors. Morphy joined Bitfarms in August 2020 and became CEO in December 2022 after co-founder Emiliano Grodzki resigned from the position. Under Morphy's leadership, Bitfarms' stock price has risen more than 130% in the past year, though it has fallen more than 20% in the past month amid a broader mining stock pullback.