March was a milestone month for Hex Trust as we announced the successful close of our Series A and continued scaling our team and operations in Hong Kong and Singapore. The investment, alongside the leading investors we’ve brought on board, enables Hex Trust to meet Asia’s soaring institutional interest in digital assets, especially from banks, exchanges and corporate clients. We’re now perfectly positioned to build Asia’s leading digital asset custodian.
The round was led by QBN Capital. Investors also joining the round include Cell Rising, Radiant Tech Ventures, Kenetic Capital, HashKey, MD Labs, Fenbushi Capital, Borderless Capital, Genesis Block Ventures and Henri Arslanian.
The funds will be used to continue enhancing our proprietary bank-grade custody platform, Hex Safe, and staying at the forefront of innovation in the digital asset ecosystem. Hex Safe offers among the broadest range of custody and treasury management services for cryptocurrencies, security tokens and, recently, NFTs.
Additional treasury management services include lending, borrowing, staking services, and connectivity to DeFi platforms. Enhancing the platform’s compliance module to comply with the latest regulatory developments will be another key focus area. Hex Trust aims to ensure seamless access to digital assets within a compliance-focused framework whilst providing the highest levels of security available in the market.
Earlier in March, we launched ‘NFT Safe’ custody for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) within Hex Safe. The integration puts Hex Trust as the first licensed global custodian to provide NFT custody for collectors and investors.
With the NFT market surging and prices of NFT’s climbing into the millions of dollars for a single collectible, it has become urgent to provide collectors and institutions with the ability to safely custody and insure their valuable assets.
Combined with a simple, easy to use interface, NFT Safe will provide the turnkey custody solution for a variety of retail and enterprise users including HNW digital asset collectors, artists and NFT issuers, institutional NFT service providers, and NFT marketplaces.
Click here to read the full announcement.
We’re scaling our team and operations in Singapore and we’re delighted to welcome James Taylor who has vast experience in securities, derivatives, and operations for a number of large financial institutions.
Click here to read a Q&A interview to introduce him to our community.
Are you interested in joining the Hex Trust team? Click here to see our current positions we’re hiring for.
Hex Trust sponsored the Greater Bay Area (GBA) Blockchain Week which was held from 30th March to 1st April. Our Head of Sales & Business Development, Calvin Shen, joined a panel discussion on the ‘Institutionalisation of Crypto Asset Management Industry & Crypto Funds Management’.
We were featured on TVB’s Money Matters as our CEO, Alessio Quaglini, was interviewed on the segment ‘Digital Gold or Fools Gold? How is Bitcoin valued and is it here to stay?’
Alessio joined Sean Lee (CEO of Algorand Foundation) recently to discuss the growth of digital asset institutional adoption and our partnership with Algorand. A big thanks to Coinscrum for hosting the discussion.
Hex Trust also sponsored the Handy Con — Handshake Conference a couple of weeks ago. All the videos are now online for those who missed them. Handshake is a decentralized, permissionless naming protocol where every peer is validating and in charge of managing the root DNS naming zone with the goal of creating an alternative to existing Certificate Authorities and naming systems.
CoinDesk: Hex Trust Raises $6M in Series A Led by QBN Capital
Tech in Asia: Hong Kong digital asset custodian bags $6m in QBN-led round
The Asset: Hex Trust raises US$6 million in Series A round
The Standard: Digital custody infrastructure provider Hex Trust raises US$6m from investors
CoinDesk: Hex Trust Launches Licenced Custody Service for Non-Fungible Tokens
Decrypt: Hex Trust Launches Custody Service for Ethereum NFTs
Forbes: Burned Banksy NFT Sets Art And Crypto Worlds Alight
In March we continued to see corporates allocate part of their treasury to digital assets. One highlight was the Hong Kong-listed firm Meitu who bought Bitcoin and Ethereum. At the time of the news, this brought their combined crypto holdings to over US$90 million.
Coinbase finally announced their IPO date to be 14th April under the ticker COIN. Coinbase plans to post its shares straight on the Nasdaq via a direct listing. With it being such a high profile listing, it’s good news for digital assets and further legitimizes and brings awareness to our fast-growing sector
Visa continued its push into digital assets and accepted a cryptocurrency payment in lieu of cash for its services. Visa processed a payment directly on the Ethereum blockchain as part of a new service the payment giant plans to introduce to its partners later this year.
And finally, Goldman Sachs became the latest bank to push Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to their clients. They’ve created a new ‘Digital Assets Group’ within their private wealth management division and will help their wealthy clients invest in the sector later this quarter.
If you’d like to learn more about our digital asset custody services, schedule a demo, or explore partnering with us, please reply to this email or reach out at:
