We are live at Token 2049 in Singapore. Joining me straight from the opening panel is Ralf Taner, Head of Business Development at Nexus Mutual, which protects investors against digital asset risks. Ralf, welcome to Fintech TV.
Thank you very much for having me.
You just finished your panel. What were the main takeaways?
The topic of the panel was tokenisation — are tokenised real world assets an investable asset class? Everyone agreed there is a gap still. From the Nexus Mutual perspective, we view it as this: tokenisation is the technology piece. But in order to be investable for institutional investors, the question is what is the risk management piece. That is what has to glue it all together. And that is what Nexus Mutual does.
For viewers new to Nexus Mutual — what do you do and how does it protect people investing on-chain?
We were founded in 2019. We are a protocol ourselves — we live on-chain, we live and breathe it every day. Think of us like a risk marketplace — the digital asset on-chain equivalent of Lloyd’s of London in a discretionary mutual format. Anyone who becomes a member can either supply capital to underwrite and earn yield on the supply side, or they can buy coverage. What are they protecting themselves from? On-chain hacks and exploits — vulnerabilities at the code level. Things like oracle manipulation and failure, governance attacks, bad debt liquidation. As an investor, if you do not understand those risks you should not be investing on-chain. You need to ask: can the person offering this explain how they are mitigating those risks, or do they have a coverage provider like Nexus in place?
Tell us about the Real World Insurance Vault.
We brought all our expertise from traditional insurance and digital assets to create a product for sophisticated accredited investors. We are working with tokenisation partners who are taking real insurance policies — home insurance, worker’s compensation, auto insurance, health insurance. Millions of policies get aggregated by insurers and passed up to reinsurers, and then tokenised. We take those tokenised assets, put them into our vault, and transform what would be a variable volatile yield into a fixed baseline yield — currently 6%, with a 90-day notice period if it changes. For investors who hold longer-term, you get additional upside yield. The soft launch first quarter saw two-year term holders achieve 23.2%. And the whole time, the baseline yield is protected because no matter what happens, the Nexus Mutual coverage embedded in the product kicks in. If there is ever a liability asset mismatch or an on-chain issue or asset impairment — both are covered in full scope.
Where do you see the biggest opportunities in real world assets over the next year?
A lot of focus now on tokenised equities. We are seeing exciting things on Robinhood, Kraken, and other exchanges. But these are billions versus the trillions — really small still. From a risk management perspective, there is always tension in crypto. My head of risk was talking at a conference last year about his concern for 2026 being the potential for blow-ups. We have not had a really substantial one yet — but we can never discount it, and we are very watchful. What we are excited about is issuers and protocols coming to us seeking our input even before launch — going through not just code auditors but actually understanding whether Nexus views the product as something it can underwrite.
Ralf, thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you so much.
