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Capital markets infrastructure is ripe for a technological upgrade
Today's capital markets are siloed and scattered among stakeholders relying on outdated proprietary databases which were not designed to communicate with each other natively and seamlessly. As a result, cash and securities settlement processes are slow, cumbersome, and costly.
Spiko announces a 4M€ pre-seed round to build the future of capital markets infrastructure by shifting financial assets from legacy settlement rails to more efficient ones thanks to tokenization. With a next-gen open-source technology stack leveraging public blockchains, Spiko enables issuance, settlement, and custody of securities - starting with mutual fund (UCITS) shares - at a fraction of current costs.
“The fast-paced development of blockchain networks in stark contrast to their sluggish adoption by finance incumbents, led us to create Spiko. Our goal is to transform the backbone of financial markets by facilitating the issuance of securities on much more powerful databases than those currently used by incumbents.” - Paul-Adrien Hyppolite, co-founder & CEO of Spiko
Launching the world’s first tokenized Money Market Funds approved by a major regulatory authority and open to retail investors
In the current interest rate environment, SMEs and individuals have limited options to grow their cash at the risk-free rate.
Existing tokenized assets either limit yield, or investor access: stablecoin issuers do not pass the income generated from their fiat reserves to the token holders, and current tokenized bond and money market fund offerings are not registered with regulators and are therefore exclusively accessible to accredited investors and qualified purchasers, excluding all others.
Traditional instruments suffer from similar issues: mainstream banks offer sub-standard returns on fixed-term deposits, whilst keeping most of the risk-free yield to themselves, and Money Market Funds (MMFs) – especially outside the United States - often come with high minimum investment requirements, again, excluding many investors from accessing them.
In this context, and following regulatory approval from the French Financial Markets Authority (AMF - Autorité des Marchés Financiers), Spiko introduces two tokenized MMFs tailored for the cash and collateral management needs of institutions, businesses and individuals:
- Spiko EU T-Bills Money Market Fund (ISIN: FR001400ODL1, Bloomberg ticker: SPKEUMM), which invests in Treasury Bills issued by the strongest Eurozone Member States,
- Spiko US T-Bills Money Market Fund (ISIN: FR001400ODM9, Bloomberg ticker: SPKUSMM), which invests in Treasury Bills issued by the U.S. Treasury.
The Spiko MMFs are the world's first MMFs that are default compatible with any Web3 wallet and accessible to retail investors with a minimum entry ticket of 1,000 EUR or USD. Shares of the Spiko MMFs (called EUTBL and USTBL) are tokenized, can be bought, held and redeemed via any Web3 wallet and are transferable 24/7 on blockchain rails. They are currently available on Ethereum and Polygon PoS.
Shareholders of the funds are entitled to participate in their governance and elect board members. The first board of directors of the funds has a majority of independent members, including co-founders of leading Web3 protocol development firms such as Angle Labs, Morpho Labs and Usual Labs, as well as tokenization pioneer RealT.
“I am particularly excited to see companies like Spiko bringing conventional financial instruments onto blockchain rails with the same regulatory and legal standards as those of traditional finance. We are witnessing an acceleration in the convergence of traditional finance and decentralized finance.” - Paul Frambot, co-founder & CEO of Morpho Labs
The Spiko MMFs are operated in collaboration with leading third parties, such as CACEIS Bank (custodian), CACEIS Fund Administration (fund admin), Twenty First Capital (asset management) and PwC (audits). Spiko was advised by law firm Gide Loyrette Nouel on its fundraising and on the legal structuring of the tokenized MMFs.
Retail and professional investors can invest in the Spiko MMFs either through Spiko’s investment platform or via APIs provided by Spiko.
“For almost a decade, it has been predicted that public blockchain networks would become the new home of capital markets. With Spiko, that promise is finally becoming fulfilled: sovereign assets fractionalized, democratized, and available to all.” - Boris Spremo, Head of Tokenization at Polygon Labs.
About Spiko
Spiko was co-founded in 2023 by Paul-Adrien Hyppolite and Antoine Michon, two former senior civil servants with a background in finance and technology. The Paris-based start up is building a tokenization platform to issue, manage and distribute securities on distributed ledger technologies. The first securities tokenized through Spiko are the world’s first fully-licensed tokenized money market funds, accessible via any Web3 wallet compatible with the Ethereum virtual machine.
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