Bassel Sabri: All right. Once more, we’re live from Definition here at TOKEN2049 in Singapore. Of course, this is the event where institutions and builders in tokenized credit, in yield, and stablecoins meet. And it is powered by Accountable, the verification layer bringing institutional finance on-chain. Joining me right now is Lauri Marekwia, co-founder and chief investment officer of Valos. Lauri, welcome to FINTECH.TV.
Lauri Marekwia: Thank you. Nice to be here.
Bassel Sabri: So first of all, for viewers who are new to Valos, can you tell us what the company does and who your clients are? Who do you serve?
Lauri Marekwia: Yes. So Valos was founded in 2024. We’re based in Finland. We were six co-founders, most of us in Finland. And we serve institutional clients, mainly ones that are already somehow in the crypto space. We started with three different products that we’re still offering. One of them is private credit. It’s what our founders have been doing also before founding Valos, so we have a long history in that space. We have mainly partnered with different market makers, prime brokers, and custodians in the industry, and are actually facing them as the borrowers and underwriting the credit risk for them.
In addition, we also have our own trading arm, so we do quant trading. We also have the delta-neutral strategies, like carry trades, more and more doing them on-chain, which I think we are strong believers in. It follows that the new crypto financial market will come more and more on-chain. So those three are our main products, all around yield, getting returns on your crypto assets, different assets. So not only stablecoins, but also the main blue-chip assets like BTC and ETH. So that’s about Valos. And yeah, I’m one of the co-founders, also based in Finland.
Bassel Sabri: And you’re also chief investment officer?
Lauri Marekwia: Yes, exactly.
Bassel Sabri: So as chief investment officer, how would you describe your investment approach?
Lauri Marekwia: Yeah, it’s a good question. So as we have three different products, it’s also catering the products to our different investor types. So we have some that want super-low risk. There, our approach is to have strategies that don’t have any drawdowns, that are overcollateralized, and super predictable from a return and risk perspective. But then, because we are in crypto, we also have the investors that are seeking super-high yield, and they are comfortable taking some risks. So that’s why we also have the quant trading team in-house, where we can offer the 50%-plus type of investment products. And yes, chief investment officer just comes down to speaking with the allocators and trying to understand what their preferences are, and how our products can fit into their mandates and values.
Bassel Sabri: [Valos] is one of the firms actually bringing its products on-chain with Accountable. So what does that make possible for you?
Lauri Marekwia: Yeah, I would say it’s three things. So first of all, it’s accessibility. It’s a great distribution method. Then there is the transparency aspect, in that we’re closely working with Accountable on how we can bring our strategies more and more on-chain, so investors can actually verify their positions.
And then, yeah, it’s the utility, as the third point. So we can compose our strategies by having them as a vault and then distributing the vault through different protocols. So for example, we could have a vault that’s usable as collateral on a lending protocol like Aave or Morpho, so that people and our investors can use the vault shares as collateral and borrow and do something else, which makes it a lot more composable and brings additional utility that you won’t see with traditional funds.
Bassel Sabri: Right. And you have a panel here at Definition today, and your panel looks at how institutional crypto credit works in 2026. How would you describe this market today?
Lauri Marekwia: Yeah, it has evolved a lot from what we were used to seeing in 2022, for example, when we saw the large defaults happening. I think the space has matured a lot. Back then, the companies that were the borrowers in the space had only a few years of track record. You were lucky if they had audited financials. Right now, they have track records of five years, all of them with audited financials, at least the ones that are getting credit, right?
And a lot also we learned from the mistakes back then. So the collaterals we are using are not illiquid and only acceptable on a certain exchange, but rather they are the blue-chip ones. They have a lot of liquidity. They are held on off-exchange settlement solutions, just to diversify the counterparty risks. And yeah, overall, it’s evolved.
But on the other hand, the market hasn’t grown too much. So we are still in the same market capital range where we were four years ago. So I think many institutional players we are speaking with are waiting for new capital to flow in, because the market cap is still quite the same, if we speak about the crypto assets in general.
Bassel Sabri: Do you personally believe or think that institutional credit can one day move fully on-chain?
Lauri Marekwia: I’m a believer in that, and I certainly want to see that happening and believe in that vision. It’s still a long way ahead. And I think what’s required for that is for lenders such as Valos to also push the trading companies, and the ones looking for credit on-chain, to bring more of their assets and their operations publicly on-chain, visible through infrastructure providers like Accountable, for example, where then, yeah, they get better terms by having their assets transparently visible. And that then brings more borrowers on-chain.
There are some risks and, yeah, hard parts that we need to solve. For example, we can track assets, but how do we track the liabilities? A borrower still has the off-chain component of having a legal structure behind the on-chain part. So how can we make sure that they don’t have liabilities that they just aren’t disclosing? So do you need to trust the financials, or can you bring them on-chain as well?
Bassel Sabri: Right. So let’s end with this. What is next for Valos over the coming year?
Lauri Marekwia: So we believe in vaults and on-chain as the new primitive. And as we have the three different strategies in our company, we want to bring them more and more on-chain. So probably the next phase for us will be to bring more of our strategies through vaults on-chain, make them composable, find distribution partners that are able to list them as collateral, and serve a broader group of investors that are already present, or are looking to become present, on-chain.
Bassel Sabri: Right. Lauri, I wish you and Valos the best of luck, and thank you for coming on FINTECH.TV.
Lauri Marekwia: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
