For years the pitch to institutions was that crypto was coming. Well — it is here. And what matters now is the machinery behind it. Norman Wooding is the Founder and CEO of SCRYPT, a Swiss firm that gives banks, funds, and family offices access to crypto liquidity and investment products. Norman, thank you so much for joining us.
Absolute pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
For viewers hearing the name for the first time, what does SCRYPT actually do and where do you sit between traditional finance and digital assets?
We are the largest stablecoin venue in Switzerland. We sit in between — we help firms accelerate, adopt, or move their business on-chain. In simple terms, we are a single point of access that lets institutions buy, trade, settle, and hold stablecoins and digital assets.
You have said that institutions obsess over getting the trade done but underestimate everything that comes after. Where do they get caught out?
A lot of institutions focus on the execution — streaming liquidity, depth of order book, pricing, and trading universe. What some of them tend to forget are the tripwires afterwards. Our jurisdiction compliance kit — which includes blockchain analytics and local settlement speed — is where we come in. We provide the entire ecosystem you need to mint, trade, settle on or off chain, and wrap your currency in any jurisdiction.
SCRYPT settles locally in dirhams. Why do native AED rails matter so much for institutional adoption?
The main things are speed and autonomy. What institutions can do today is settle in AED locally — which previously was constrained to Swift. What that means is quicker turnover, faster settlement time, higher client satisfaction, and an increase in volume and velocity. They can confidently move their local currency in a quick and compliant manner.
Where are institutions seeing the clearest payoff from stablecoins today?
On a daily basis you are hearing announcements from large incumbents adopting or pushing stablecoins. Nothing is really holding it back today in terms of treasury. We see a huge push towards tokenised money market funds and treasury bills. What stablecoins allow is a little bit more autonomy, a little bit more speed, and a lot more efficiency.
Both the UAE and Switzerland have become serious digital asset hubs but got there differently. What can each learn from the other?
The UAE could learn from Switzerland's stability and consistency — we have been here for seven years and have always had a clear regulatory framework. What Switzerland could learn from the UAE is pace and speed.
What does the future look like for SCRYPT over the next five to ten years?
We are focusing on vertical growth and jurisdictional expansion. In terms of what the future holds — likely in the next five years, the vast majority of our clients will be agents, agentic payments, AI-driven, or non-human in terms of how transactions are initiated. We are today an API-first company, but those products are catered towards CIOs, traders, and treasury managers. In the future we need to cater our products more towards agentic individuals and agentic businesses.
Norman, thank you so much for joining us today.
Absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.
