ETFs were just the starting point. And the big story now is putting real world assets onto blockchain rails. Here to discuss this and why the Gulf is positioned to lead is Andrew Forson, President of DeFi Technologies and Chief Growth Officer at Valour. Welcome to the show, Andrew.
Thank you so much. It is a pleasure to be here.
What does DeFi Technologies do and how does Valour fit into the picture?
DeFi Technologies is a digital assets infrastructure company — we work at the intersection of traditional capital markets and modern digital assets. The best example of what we do is our Valour asset manager, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of DeFi Technologies. Valour is known throughout Europe for digital asset underlying ETPs. We have over 100 of these structured instruments traded on nine exchanges around the world — from the Brazilian B3 to the London Stock Exchange, Paris and Amsterdam Euronext, the SIX exchange in Switzerland, and our home market in Stockholm. What we do is put digital assets and crypto tokens into regulated wrappers and trade them on traditional capital market exchanges, so people have the comfort and ability to invest in this new asset class through their regular broker dealer.
You have said tokenised finance can really help the economies of countries in this region. What do you mean by that?
The core takeaway is that by bringing liquidity into a range of assets via regulated rails, you prevent leakage of capital outside the region. You ensure that capital is deployed into regulated instruments that are listed within the region. In practice, that means more liquidity, more capital flowing locally, and more growth within the region. What you do not want is capital flowing into jurisdictions that do not have direct benefit back into UAE or regional volumes. The objective would be to have as many of these instruments listed at the ADX or the Dubai Financial Market as possible — so that asset managers can make decisions to invest via regulated instruments listed within the jurisdiction.
Tokenised sovereign debt is seeing enormous success in the US with tokenised treasuries. How can this technology change a country's ability to raise capital?
This is an excellent use case. The core problem we solve in capital markets is liquidity — making it easy for capital to seek investments that fit a particular investor's profile. The beauty with tokenised instruments is they are highly fungible, highly liquid, and they move very quickly. They bring what we traditionally call the hallmarks of an efficient market. Now, whenever you are dealing with digital assets and tokenised instruments, it does not take away from traditional assets — it provides another vector for traditional capital to flow into these assets. Sovereign debt is actually one of the largest asset classes in the world, with approximately $100 trillion issued globally every year. When you allow for the digitisation of that debt, you open it to stablecoin inflows, other electronic formats, and regulated wrappers that allow asset managers like Valour to package these instruments so that more capital can enter via traditional broker dealers. That is very positive for any marketplace.
What progress has Valour made in this region so far?
We have had a very long and successful relationship in the region. We currently have a trading desk and market making desk situated here. Right now we are looking to expand into other products — we have a large portfolio of digital asset ETPs listed in Europe that we would very much like to see directly represented within the UAE, to ensure capital stays within the region. We also have a range of new fund products coming online including AI-related strategies that help provide optimal returns. These are more for professional investors, but given that the UAE is such a hub for international capital markets, we look forward to discussing these instruments with capital allocators in the region.
Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today, Andrew.
Thank you. It has been a pleasure.
