Vanguard, Crypto's Oldest Hater, Finally Posts a Crypto Job 🤝

Vanguard has opened its first-ever search for a head of digital assets, a senior role tasked with building a multi-year roadmap covering tokenization, stablecoins, custody, digital wallets and blockchain-based settlement. The listing, requisition 179858 posted July 6 on Vanguard's careers portal, sits within Vanguard Personal Wealth and lists hybrid locations in Malvern, Dallas, Scottsdale and Charlotte. The job description states the executive will "lead Vanguard Personal Wealth's digital assets strategy, roadmap, and enterprise execution," coordinating across product, technology, operations, legal and compliance, advising senior leadership, and representing the firm with regulators and industry groups.

The move marks a notable reversal for the $10 trillion to $12.5 trillion asset manager, which blocked spot bitcoin ETFs from its brokerage platform when they launched in January 2024 and long described crypto as inconsistent with its investment philosophy. The thaw began in December 2025, when Vanguard began allowing its more than 50 million brokerage clients to trade third-party cryptocurrency ETFs and mutual funds, including products holding $BTC, $ETH, $XRP and $SOL. The new head of digital assets will also evaluate whether the firm should build capabilities internally, partner with third parties or delay entering specific market segments. Vanguard has not filed for a proprietary crypto ETF and has reiterated it has no plans to launch one, a position CEO Salim Ramji reinforced in August 2024 when he said the firm would not "copy competitors." Ramji, Vanguard's first externally hired CEO, joined in July 2024 from BlackRock, where he led the iShares unit behind the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), a fund that held about $54 billion as of March 31.

US spot bitcoin ETFs held $74.37 billion in net assets as of July 2, with $221.72 million in inflows that day ending a 10-day outflow streak, and total net assets of $77.32 billion as of publication. The tokenized real-world asset market has grown to $33.5 billion, including $14.9 billion in tokenized US Treasury products, according to RWA.xyz. Franklin Templeton manages about $2.5 billion in tokenized assets, BlackRock oversees roughly $2.3 billion, and WisdomTree's tokenized Treasury fund has grown to more than $700 million, while JPMorgan filed in May to launch a tokenized money market fund for stablecoin issuers and State Street introduced a government money market fund for stablecoin reserves and a tokenized liquidity product the following month. In March, Franklin Templeton partnered with Ondo Finance to offer tokenized versions of its ETFs accessible through crypto wallets, and Fidelity launched a blockchain-based liquidity fund in May that received its first crypto-native investment last month after Theo allocated $20 million to the product.