TBW - Paul-Adrien Hyppolite (Spiko): "Our goal is to unlock the billions sitting idle in banks"

The Big Whale: What is your assessment since the launch of Spiko?

Paul-Adrien Hyppolite: We officially launched mid-2024, in June. Our flagship metric, the one that everyone looks at, is assets under management. Today, we have just over $815 million spread across our various products.

Our structuring products remain those we had from the outset: a euro money market fund and a dollar money market fund. And, notably, it is the euro fund that is now the largest. We manage just over €500 million in this sub-fund, which to our knowledge makes it the largest tokenised cash equivalent in euros today, ahead of references such as Circle's EURC stablecoin.

Since the launch, we have also added other building blocks, in particular a sterling money market fund. It's still very small (in the region of £3 to 4 million) but the market for tokenised cash in GBP is still more embryonic than that in euros, so this size already places us among the visible players in this segment.

If we take a step back in relation to the industry, this places us among the significant players in the tokenisation of financial assets in the world. Number one remains BlackRock with around $2 billion in BUIDL. Then there is Franklin Templeton. "All funds combined, our assets under management are on track to overtake Franklin Templeton's BENJI."

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You have just been granted a MIFID investment firm licence. What does this mean in practical terms for Spiko?

Until now, we operated mainly as a distributor, under the Franco-French status of CIF (financial investment adviser). This allowed us to sell our products in France and, in some cases, to accept foreign clients on reverse solicitation, but we couldn't actively canvass them or do targeted marketing outside France.

In practice, this meant that most of our assets under management were French, even though we already had an international pocket. The new investment firm licence allows us to change scale. Thanks to the European passport mechanism, we can notify our regulator and then roll out our activities in other European Union countries (Germany, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, etc.).

Our ambition for 2026 is precisely to lay the first building blocks for this European expansion. But we have no immediate intention of going to the United States: it's a different market, with different rules, and we want to move forward in stages.

Beyond distribution, this licence has another very important, more technical but structuring effect: it allows us to formally become a registrar.

Until now, Spiko was mainly a technology provider: we made the on-chain infrastructure available, but the operational responsibility for keeping the registry remained with the issuer. Now, this means that we are no longer just a software provider: we bear responsibility for running the fund's registry.

Concretely, how is your legal set-up structured?

We created a SICAV under French law. The AMF granted UCITS passport status to the first two sub-funds, Spiko EUR and Spiko USD. This SICAV is an independent legal entity, with its own board of directors.

Management is entrusted to a partner management company, Twenty First Capital (TFC), which remains in charge of buying and selling the underlying Treasury bills. This point is not changing: TFC remains the management company.

What is changing is that Spiko is formally becoming the registrar. We made this choice because we want a truly on-chain fund. If we delegated this function to a traditional player operating via Euroclear, we would lose the very essence of tokenisation. Our entire infrastructure has been designed so that the fund's register lives on the blockchain.

Does this internalisation improve your margins?

A little, since this is an activity that we are internalising. But the real challenge isn't financial: it's operational and strategic. We now control a critical function from end to end.

"I am convinced that distribution is the sinews of war"

If you had to rank your competitive advantage, would you say that it is first technological, regulatory or distribution-related?

In order: distribution first, then technology, then regulation. Many think the opposite, but I'm convinced that distribution is the lifeblood of growing AUM.

If we're already close to Franklin Templeton in terms of AUM, it's not because we have a stronger brand than them. It's because we've been more effective on distribution in this particular segment.

Technology is obviously key. Managing an on-chain, potentially cross-chain registry infrastructure, with bridges, security and compliance requirements, is not trivial. It's a real business, comparable to that of the major stablecoin issuers.

As for regulation, it is a barrier to entry, especially for start-ups. Obtaining authorisation is long and demanding. But for established incumbents, it's not an insurmountable barrier. Their real challenge is more operational and strategic: knowing why and how they want to do it.

At the outset, you presented Spiko as a simple way to access Treasury bills. Is that still the way you see it?

Yes, with one important clarification: we only do very short-term. These are Treasury bills (zero coupon, maturities of one or three months) and not long bonds with interest rate risk.

Our value proposition has not changed. There is a misalignment of interests between those who hold cash and those who distribute money (banks, payment institutions, stablecoin issuers). As long as rates are positive, letting cash lie dormant on these rails represents a massive opportunity cost.

Our aim is to provide simple, transparent access to the central bank's risk-free rate, via robust cash instruments and a modern infrastructure. We started with money market funds, but our vision is broader: to build the best cash management products across multiple currencies.

"At Spiko, a customer can create an account in a few minutes and access the fund directly"

In practical terms, what is impossible or too costly with a traditional money market fund, and becomes simpler when it is on-chain?

I see three main dimensions.

The first, and by far the most important today, is distribution. In the traditional system, to access a money market fund, you are trapped in the whole intermediation chain: central securities depository, custodian account keepers, banks that open current accounts and then securities accounts, ISIN selection, cut-off management and so on. It's cumbersome, slow, and often a deterrent, especially for companies that don't already have a sophisticated banking infrastructure.

With tokenisation, you disintermediate a large part of this chain. At Spiko, a customer can create an account in minutes and access the fund directly. It's not just faster: it's a change in user experience. The on-chain is first and foremost a tool for simplification and access.

The second dimension is transparency. In a traditional money market fund, you don't have simple, verifiable visibility of the structure of the register: how many holders there are, their level of concentration, changes over time, etc. This data exists, but it is fragmented, difficult to obtain and impossible to audit in real time.

By putting the register on-chain, you create a public right to read aggregated metrics, without exposing private data. Any analytics platform can query the blockchain and find out how many investors there are at any given time, how they are distributed, or how this is changing. For sophisticated treasuries, this transparency has real value: they want to understand the stability and concentration of the fund in which they are placing their cash.

The third dimension is more forward-looking, but potentially structuring: the role of the money market fund as collateral. A cash equivalent is used to refinance, post margin on derivatives platforms, or move collateral between different infrastructures. In the traditional system, this is extremely tedious because of the hours, settlement times, and fragmentation of the systems.

The blockchain infrastructure operates 24/7 and allows near-instantaneous transfers. If you need to move collateral from Euronext to the CME, for example, the promise of on-chain is to make that movement much smoother. Today, it's not yet industrial on a large scale, because the ecosystem is still young, but it's clearly a major frontier, a bit like stablecoins were for international payments.

"We're thinking about launching other products that would allow you to seek a return higher than the risk-free rate"

Your attractiveness also depends on interest rates. How do you adapt to falling rates?

Our remuneration is linked to the amount outstanding, so we are necessarily sensitive to the interest rate cycle. If rates were to fall very low, the economic interest for our customers would mechanically diminish.

That said, we have already been through a significant fall. When we launched, euro rates were around 4%. They then fell sharply, and yet we continued to grow very strongly. We haven't seen any major negative impact on business momentum.

Today, expectations in the eurozone are more around 2%, which remains an attractive environment as soon as you have significant amounts of cash. In the United States and the United Kingdom, expectations are tending to fall, but levels are still higher than the euro, so interest remains.

At the same time, we are actively thinking about launching other products that would enable us to seek a return higher than the risk-free rate, to be even more resilient if central bank rates fall further. There's nothing we can announce today, but it's a strategic priority for us.

What do you have in mind?

A concrete example is the so-called cash and carry, or basis trade strategies. The idea is to arbitrage the spread between the spot price of an asset and the short-term future price. When the curve is in contango, you can buy the spot and sell the future to capture an almost certain return over a given period.

These strategies are often countercyclical: they become more attractive in environments where rates are falling and speculation is increasing, which tends to push up futures prices. We are taking a very serious look at this type of product and are already working on improving an existing initial version.

And where would tokenisation come into play in this type of strategy?

Our on-chain registry infrastructure is designed to be generic. It applies to all our current products, and could even eventually be used by other players. It's a layer of financial infrastructure that can support different types of instruments, not just money market funds.

"Our real competition isn't just asset managers: it's mainly on the banking side"

Your competitors are now BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, Amundi... How do you stack up against these giants?

The fact that all these players are positioning themselves is first and foremost a validation of our thesis. When we started in 2023, there was virtually nothing in large-scale production in Europe. Seeing BlackRock, Franklin Templeton or Amundi arrive confirms that tokenisation is becoming a legitimate infrastructure.

That said, our real competition isn't just these asset managers: it's mainly from the banks. In Europe, the majority of cash remains in bank deposits, not in money market funds. The American market is very different: money market funds are massive there. So the challenge is not so much to fight for the few billion already tokenised, but to get a share of the gigantic masses currently tied up in bank rails.

If the movement towards tokenisation accelerates, everyone will benefit, including the major asset managers. The real game is being played on the structural transformation of European cash management.

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If we were to draw up a typical portrait of your client base, what would it look like?

The core of our client base today is mainly start-ups. We're also starting to see more and more non-technology SMEs, which is very encouraging for us.

We're targeting this vast segment of medium-sized companies, which have cash but don't necessarily have the same sophisticated tools as large groups. Large corporates are not yet our priority target, although we think that one day we will have products adapted for them.

In euros, we have very good fiat payment rails, thanks in particular to our banking and payment partners. In non-euro currencies, it's even less fluid, and this is clearly an area for improvement for us.

At the same time, we're working on improving our stablecoin rails to offer a payment experience as good as fiat, if not better for everything cross-border. Sending stablecoins is structurally faster and cheaper than going through SWIFT.

That said, I have to be transparent: today, the on-ramp and off-ramp experience in stablecoins is still often not as good as the fiat experience. We know how to do it, we have regulated partners, but the overall market infrastructure is not yet as fluid as we would like.

Our aim is for our customers to be able to move their cash (whether tokenised or not) between Spiko, their bank account and their wallet almost instantaneously and transparently.

You have very satisfied customers, but there are inevitably also companies that you are unable to convince. What are the main obstacles for traditional finance departments?

There are three main ones.

The first is the issue of trust and the brand. In treasury, the level of reassurance expected is extremely high. Many CFOs still ask themselves: can I trust Spiko as much as my historical bank? Even if the underlying is in Treasury bills and we are regulated, it takes time to establish this credibility.

The second brake is competition from certain bank term accounts which can, in certain situations, offer attractive terms. This can make our proposal less competitive from time to time, even if the risk profile and structure are not exactly comparable.

The third brake comes more from the crypto world: some players are prepared to seek returns on DeFi protocols like Aave or Morpho for their cash. This is a very different logic, with a much higher level of risk and volatility, but it exists as an alternative for a minority of crypto-native companies. For the classic corporate world, this point remains marginal.

"Banks retain a central role in credit and money creation"

Are banks in danger of losing their monopoly on cash management infrastructure?

I think we're going to see a dynamic in Europe quite similar to that in the United States, with much greater development of money market funds and therefore partial disintermediation of bank deposits.

But that doesn't mean that banks are going to disappear. In the United States, there are now around $7,000 billion in money market funds, yet bank deposits remain massive. Banks continue to play a central role in credit and money creation.

On the other hand, I am convinced that money market funds will continue to grow in Europe, and that private credit (direct lending, private debt) will also develop. Europe is behind the US in this transformation, but is clearly catching up.

Would private credit be of interest to you?

Yes, clearly. We'll never be a bank, but anything to do with market returns is of interest to us. We started with money market products, which are the least risky. But there is a whole curve of products and strategies beyond that. I would be very surprised if we never did anything in private credit.

And tokenisation: do you think the impetus will come more from native players like you, or from the big banks and asset managers?

A few years ago, I would have answered without hesitation: native players like us. Today, I tend to stick with this line, because these are more agile companies, very focused on infrastructure, which are pushing innovation.

That said, the large masses of assets remain with the incumbent players. If they decide to really go for it and fast, they can go very fast. So nothing is set in stone.

But when I look at the complexity of distribution, technology and the on-chain registrar business, I don't think it's easy for traditional players.

How do you see cash management for a large group evolving over the next five to ten years?

I really think that on-chain will play a central role. Large groups already have access to almost all existing financial products, so the value we bring today to start-ups or SMEs is less obvious to them. But they face other very structural problems: cash reconciliation, cut-offs, settlement times, fragmentation of systems and the difficulty of moving money between means of payment and means of investment.

If tokenisation makes it possible to make these movements more fluid (i.e. to move more easily from "operational" cash to "invested" cash and vice versa) then we solve a real pain point, sometimes involving colossal amounts. Even if it's only a matter of hours or days saved, the economic impact can be enormous for large treasuries.

I'm convinced that what we're building will one day serve much larger structures. The infrastructure is not yet completely ready for this, but in one or two years' time, I think the ground will be much more favourable.

Does this development depend on the development of euro stablecoins?

Yes, quite strongly. Stablecoins are destined to become the main tokenised means of payment, while products like ours will be tokenised means of investment. The fluid articulation between the two is key to making the promise work on a large scale.

What use of tokenisation is most underestimated by CFOs today?

In my opinion, they still underestimate the extent to which platforms like ours can offer a much faster and simpler experience of accessing money market funds. Many haven't really tested the product yet, and until they've seen it in practice, it's hard for them to measure the qualitative leap.

That said, among the major groups, particularly the CAC 40, we've already spoken to treasurers who are very familiar with these subjects. They have a good understanding of the current pain points and are taking a serious look at what tokenisation can bring. So I wouldn't say they're blind to the potential, but rather that there are still technical and operational hurdles to clear before mass adoption.

Are stablecoins competitors for you?

Not really. I see them more as complements. It's a bit like comparing bank deposits, e-money and money market funds: these are different forms of currency that already co-exist.

Stablecoins are first and foremost efficient payment rails. We are more of an investment rail. If the interaction between the two is well thought out, on the contrary, it's a powerful growth lever for us.

I don't believe at all in the idea that a single form of currency would end up crushing all the others. There will always be banks to extend credit, credit funds to finance the economy, money funds to manage cash, and stablecoins to facilitate programmable payments.

DeFi: what Spiko is actually testing

You recently entered DeFi via the Morpho and Société Générale-Forge pools. Are you satisfied with this trial?

Yes, very satisfied. Technically, it's working remarkably well: we've demonstrated that a tokenised regulated financial instrument can be used as on-chain collateral to automatically borrow a stablecoin.

But we have to be clear: we're still in a very niche phase. The big lending protocols like Aave or Morpho have a lot of liquidity, but almost exclusively on crypto-native assets. The use of traditional tokenised financial instruments remains marginal.

Our more technical customers can already use these possibilities, but it's not yet an industrialised product at Spiko. The main reason is legal and contractual: it is not yet clear how to qualify a DeFi protocol from a regulatory point of view, or who is liable in the event of a problem. As long as there is no standardised contractual framework, scaling up will remain limited.

But the potential is very strong, especially for assets that are less liquid than money market funds. With money market funds, the interest in lending is relatively low, because we already offer 24/7 withdrawals. On the other hand, for private credit, structured cash and carry or other strategies, the possibility of borrowing against its collateral without selling the asset becomes extremely attractive.

On-chain liquidity is often presented as a structural advantage. Is this already the case?

At this stage, it is still largely theoretical for regulated financial instruments. For a money market fund like ours, the advantage is limited, because we already offer almost instant liquidity.

Where it will become really powerful is for less liquid instruments. When we can use these assets as collateral in a fluid and global way, without relying on market schedules or traditional systems, we'll start to see a real paradigm shift.

We're seeing yield products emerge that use Morpho pools. Could Spiko fit into this?

Yes, absolutely. It would be conceivable to create regulated funds that allocate part of their capital to this type of on-chain lending strategy.

More broadly, we are interested in all non-bank sources of yield: lending, collateralised borrowing, basis trade, structured credit. At some point in our roadmap, there will inevitably be products that incorporate these logics.

Could we imagine freely exchangeable and anonymous Spiko tokens?

No, and that would not be desirable. Our tokens represent fund units - legally shares in SICAVs. In most jurisdictions, these securities cannot be anonymous. In France, it would be illegal. In the United States too.

There are arrangements where certain debt instruments can be more freely transferable, but these are other types of product, with other constraints. This does not call into question the model of tokenised money market funds.

So there is no strategic issue for us in fighting a regulatory battle to make Spiko tokens anonymous.

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