You have a fairly unusual combination of backgrounds — finance, law and web3. How did those threads come together, and what drew you specifically to infrastructure-layer work at Lagoon?
I trained as a lawyer in Denmark and the UK, and as part of this training I was introduced to smart contracts — i.e. programmable agreements — in 2015. This was my first ‘aha!’ moment, where I knew that the financial and legal sectors would be shaped by this technology. Later in life, I worked in funds on the buy side, and some of these funds began buying bitcoin as early as 2016. This also gave me a strong understanding of the internal workings of different funds — big and small, institutional investors as pension funds, and retail-focused products, funds that operate as a 25-man lean team managing 10 billion assets under management (AUM), and funds that are part of bigger conglomerates as for example an asset manager of a big insurance house.
These experiences shaped my understanding of the problems, the opportunities and the evolving landscape of asset management and wealth management sectors. If you consider operational inefficiencies in traditional asset management and finance, coupled with the digitisation of wealth management and money flows, you quickly realise that blockchains are much better at powering global money flows than traditional systems.
At the same time, you see a huge proliferation of digital dollars, especially in the global south, where traditional financial markets are not well developed, infrastructure is built from scratch, and local currencies are weak, which makes people seek out digital dollars. All this means that as capital moves onchain, there is a need to manage the capital. And this is where Lagoon Finance comes in — it is the Infrastructure for onchain asset management.
For traditional institutions, there is a pull and a push factor. The pull is new distribution channels for existing products. The push is for operational efficiencies, which lead to increased margins. Especially the wealth management and asset management sectors have historically been reluctant to innovate and are still to this date driven by manual processes.
The onchain asset management space is getting crowded. What’s the specific gap Lagoon is filling that others are not?
Lagoon is the digital asset management infrastructure built by asset managers for asset managers. As an infrastructure layer we turn any strategy, onchain or offchain, directional or neutral, into institutional-grade investment vehicles. We provide the programmatic portfolio and fund management infrastructure for any fund, any asset, any strategy on any chain. Lagoon is the only infrastructure that lets managers deploy in minutes, not weeks, without changing their existing governance or execution processes.
You have spoken about asset managers moving into digital assets as the big opportunity. How far along is that shift really, are institutions genuinely ready, or is it still more talk than action?
Franklin Templeton. BlackRock. Apollo. Fidelity. Janus Henderson. Coinshares. HSBC. J.P. Morgan. Citi. Coinbase. Nasdaq-listed names. We are now speaking to private banks all across Europe wanting to launch digital asset products to their audiences. Small and mid-sized asset and wealth managers are either launching new products or tokenising existing products to launch the so-called share class ‘T’. I would say the institutions and traditional firms are here, and they represent a serious, addressable market for Lagoon.
The gap in the market isn’t a lack of tools. It’s a usability, compliance and integration gap. Most platforms require a manager to adapt to the platform and the chosen ruleset. Lagoon adapts to the manager. Lagoon offers an open-architecture, the so-called ‘Vault Factory’. A manager can deploy a vehicle through Lagoon using any preferred custody solution and will maintain absolute control over all processes and the vehicle post-deployment. Our infrastructure is intentionally ‘zero-dev’, ie, it requires no additional development work to facilitate the most complex investment strategies in accordance with managers’ investment mandates.
RWA tokenisation has been discussed for years but is now actually moving. What’s changed, and what do you think finally tipped the market?
Real-world asset (RWA) is ultimately traditional investment strategies materialising as new products on chain. Imagine a private equity (PE) fund launching a vehicle through Lagoon that buys cash-generating businesses in the real world, restructures them, and shares the cash flow with allocators into the strategy. Onchain, this will be categorised as an RWA product onchain, whereas in traditional finance, this is a classic PE buyout strategy. Beyond that there is reinsurance products, tokenised stocks, money market funds on chain and much more. All these are well-known products in the traditional world, these are just being relaunched onchain. And for managers, launching onchain offers a new distribution channel and operational efficiencies in managing a fund, which ultimately leads to better outcomes for both investors and managers.
You have highlighted stablecoins as central to the future of asset management. Do you see them as infrastructure, or as a product in their own right and does that distinction matter?
Stablecoins are both product and infrastructure, and that is precisely why the distinction matters. They are a product issued by a private entity, but once in circulation, they operate as infrastructure that DeFi, asset managers rely on as a unit of account. That dual nature is exactly where the risk lives. It is a nuance, but potentially an important one to have in mind, as we see more and more stablecoin issuers. For consumers, the value added is the same. However, the risk posed by different private issuance vary and it is important to understand who is behind the issued stablecoin, the degree of decentralisation, how the peg is maintained, what its track record, circulation amount, longevity, and regulatory acceptance.
As the last thing you want, whether an institution or private individual, is to start using a stablecoin that loses its peg if the market conditions become stressed. Just remember the run on the bank experienced by Silicon Valley Bank, where Circle held some of its deposits that pegged the USDC. This gave quite a few people a scare regarding USDC peg.
Then you also have a lot of so-called structured products posing as stablecoins. As a consumer I would be very careful as in reality you’re buying a structured instrument that calls itself a stablecoin just because there’s a lot of demand for stables. But is the team skilled and experienced in running the strategy? Can the strategy withstand the test of time in stressful market conditions? They have become the backbone of DeFi, with a massive expansion over the past year. With so many new stablecoins entering the market, analysing and auditing their characteristics and risk profile has become a dedicated job for any serious asset manager. Not every stablecoin is created equal.
Lagoon operates across over 18 chains. How do you think about regulatory risk across jurisdictions, is that a feature or a vulnerability at this stage?
Technology and financial regulation have always been fragmented, complex and multilayered. The regulatory landscape is dominated by a few nations around the globe that lead in setting the tone when it comes to the regulatory standards, approach, and certainty for the technology and financial sectors. I believe the answer should always be that if you’re aiming to comply with some of the most clear and strict requirements, you will be on the safe side no matter where you operate. This means that we aim to keep the highest standards to be on the safe side. At the same time, it is a constantly evolving landscape, difficult to track, especially as businesses operate in a multijurisdictional environment. For years now, a lot of blockchain-based products haven’t had the clarity needed to comply.
DeFi risk frameworks are still immature. How does Lagoon approach the tension between moving fast and building something institutional-grade?
My team and I have firm roots in traditional finance, while also being around at the onset of digital assets. This means that we’re taking the best TradFi risk management practices have to offer and combining them with the constantly evolving best practices in blockchains. It is not a one-time and done approach, it is a foundational practice that underpins everything we do, from our original architecture design to day-to-day activities.
Lagoon is intentionally built to minimise the attack surface and maximise flexibility for managers using the infrastructure to impose their preferred rules and institutional standards, from distribution of powers to auditability, and ultimately control of the entire stack. Because every time a manager launches their vault or investment vehicle on Lagoon, they have full control. Lagoon doesn’t control either design choices or everyday management of the product.
Nasdaq and major exchanges are moving into crypto market infrastructure. Does that validate what you are building, or does it complicate it?
It validates that the future of finance is onchain, and blockchains are the new backend of TradFi — blockchains are a better alternative to traditional systems when it comes to global money flows and settlement of capital markets.
Where does Lagoon need to be in three years for this to have worked?
In three years, Lagoon will be the default infrastructure for any manager, TradFi or crypto-native. By then, the broader thesis will have played out, i.e. blockchains will have matured into the backend of global money movement and asset management, and Lagoon will be the core engine of that stack. The distinction between onchain and offchain will have vanished because the world’s leading managers use Lagoon to run the entire lifecycle of any investment vehicle.
When a manager deploys on Lagoon, they select their primary deployment chain. Then assets can move across chains or offchain with no limitations on strategy. The strategy is defined inside the manager’s chosen custody solution. Lagoon functions as a non-custodial, pass-through infrastructure. Lagoon does not custody assets, and the vehicle’s ‘ownership’ and ‘management’ rest entirely with the manager from the moment of creation. Thus, the responsibility for jurisdictional compliance remains with the manager, who can tailor their instance to the specific laws of the chosen country.
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