Not like many start-up founders, former funding banker Christopher Flinos wasn’t aiming to resolve an issue when he began engaged on the idea for Hayvn, the Abu Dhabi International Market-regulated digital asset buying and selling platform.
It was whereas working at Sterling Monetary Providers, a boutique funding financial institution he co-founded in Abu Dhabi with a former colleague from Merrill Lynch, that he noticed a serious hole in cryptocurrency buying and selling.
Or, as Mr Flinos, co-founder and chief govt of Hayvn, prefers to say, “We noticed a chance the scale of a bus”.
That was about six years in the past, a time when there have been few alternatives for retail traders to hold out massive trades in cryptocurrencies on established platforms or by over-the-counter (OTC) buying and selling desks.
“On the time, there was a ‘no man’s land’ of WhatsApp teams and money trades and issues like that,” Mr Flinos, from Melbourne, Australia, says.
“I used to be making an attempt to place some massive trades on for a shopper and for myself, and I used to be watching how these transactions needed to occur. All they had been shopping for had been Bitcoin and Ethereum however they had been of great measurement … so there wasn’t something accessible available in the market.
“My view was that this will’t proceed. The expertise is just too good for this form of buying and selling to proceed indefinitely, so the concept began with the buying and selling desk.”
Mr Flinos and fellow founder Ahmed Ismail arrange Hayvn in 2018 by adapting their “funding financial institution DNA” to create a platform that provided traders a regulated “protected haven” within the “anti-establishment”, typically risky world of cryptocurrencies, he says.
“Our enterprise is not constructed on the blockchain however all of the merchandise that we use are, so I feel all people fairly likes that strategy,” Mr Flinos says.
“And the most effective factor about it’s, I needn’t reinvent the wheel; I simply must go about doing what I usually would have executed if I used to be working at Merrill, however simply be you.”
In recent times, the UAE has emerged as a world centre for digital belongings.
In March final yr, Dubai adopted the Dubai Digital Asset Regulation Legislation, which goals to create a complicated authorized framework to guard traders and supply worldwide requirements for digital asset business governance that promotes accountable enterprise progress within the emirate.
It additionally established the Digital Asset Regulatory Authority (Vara) as an unbiased physique to manage the sector all through the emirate, together with particular improvement zones and free zones, however excluding the Dubai Worldwide Monetary Centre.
Final September, the Monetary Providers Regulatory Authority, the regulator of the ADGM, revealed guiding rules on its strategy to digital asset regulation and supervision to stipulate its expectations for the asset class and repair suppliers within the sector.
Watch: What’s Bitcoin and the way did it begin?
The rules complement ADGM’s regulatory framework for spot digital asset actions, the monetary regulator mentioned on the time.
Hayvn is now regulated in 4 monetary jurisdictions: Abu Dhabi, Switzerland, Australia and the Cayman Islands.
Its companies have expanded from the unique OTC cryptocurrency buying and selling enterprise to incorporate digital asset custodial companies, asset administration and digital funds.
It additionally works with some UAE actual property builders, permitting folks to purchase property utilizing cryptocurrency.
Whereas Mr Flinos invested an undisclosed sum in Hayvn and didn’t earn a wage for greater than three years, the corporate’s seed spherical raised funding of just below $1 million.
Christopher Flinos, co-founder and chief govt of Havyn
Hayvn is making ready for a collection B funding spherical within the second half of this yr and goals to lift as much as $20 million, which it’ll use to additional scale the enterprise and doubtlessly spin off Hayvn Pay.
“We’re working by that in the meanwhile and are hopeful that we can spin off Hayvn Pay fairly rapidly, have it by itself after which doubtlessly have a look at whether or not the collection B is finished on the Hayvn stage, or whether or not it’s executed on the Hayvn Pay [level],” Mr Flinos says.
In November, Hayvn mentioned it was contemplating a proper bid for the acquisition of collapsed cryptocurrency trade FTX’s funds enterprise, because it appeals as a “bolt-on” to the Hayvn Pay infrastructure.
“We’re happy to be taught that among the FTX enterprise have solvent steadiness sheets, accountable administration and precious franchises,” Mr Flinos advised The Nationwide on the time.
“We’re open to a dialogue with their bankers, Perella Weinberg, as quickly as they’ve the court docket’s approval to proceed.”
FTX filed for chapter safety within the US on November 11 within the highest-profile cryptocurrency trade failure so far.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced co-founder and former chief govt of FTX, is presently below home arrest within the US after being charged with eight prison counts for allegedly misusing billions of {dollars} in buyer funds earlier than the $9 billion collapse of the platform and Alameda Analysis.
Cryptocurrencies — in photos
The FTX Pay bid continues to be on the desk and the corporate is ready to obtain the due diligence pack, Mr Flinos says.
“I’m nonetheless constructive on that and I’m nonetheless hopeful that we can do a transaction and win that enterprise,” he says.
“With the capital increase that we’re going to be doing over the following couple of months, it’s all designed round actually going headfirst into that cryptocurrency funds ecosystem.
“We are attempting to compete towards establishments and organisations within the fee house which have been there for 30, 40, 50 years, so we want some measurement and we want some scale.”
Q&A with Christopher Flinos, co-founder and chief govt of Hayvn
What different profitable start-up do you want you had began?
Since founding Hayvn 5 years in the past, I’ve all the time had a watch out at different new companies and nice concepts which have been taken to market and learnt from their success and, generally, their failure. It has been unbelievable to see the increase in transformational enterprise fashions which have come out of this, globally and regionally.
My private favorite is Midday and seeing them roll out Midday, then Grocery, then Meals after which the 15-minute enterprise. All complementary and an exquisite enterprise mannequin of capturing a shopper after which by no means letting them go away your ecosystem.
Witnessing the success of this enterprise mannequin, of extending the shopper life cycle, by value-adding companies, is what drove me to construct Hayvn into a completely regulated institutional cryptocurrency powerhouse.
Who’s your function mannequin?
My function mannequin ever since I got here to the Gulf has been Khaldoon Al Mubarak, managing director and group chief govt of Mubadala Funding Firm. What he has achieved for the nation in so many roles, starting from Mubadala by to Manchester Metropolis, is actually spectacular. I hope someday I get to satisfy him.
What new abilities have you ever learnt since launching Hayvn?
I’m very clear on the three largest issues that I’ve learnt since launching Hayvn. I’ve learnt find out how to lead. I’ve learnt find out how to deliver folks collectively round a standard objective and find out how to execute. Whenever you begin a brand new enterprise with seed capital, you may’t simply throw cash at a state of affairs; you will need to organically construct the proper workforce and the proper companions. Within the early days, they’re actually investing in you personally. Your integrity, honesty, imaginative and prescient and drive to get the enterprise to a degree the place it’s self-sustaining are all integral to succeeding.
The place do you need to be in 5 years?
In 5 years from now, I count on to have led Hayvn to turn out to be one of many world’s most trusted establishments for digital belongings worldwide and a key participant within the world funds business. We can have efficiently “IPO’d” the enterprise, and be trying to merge Hayvn into an current banking large or buying a financial institution and rolling it into the Hayvn ecosystem.
In the event you may do all of it otherwise, what would you alter?
I spent the primary 9 months when Hayvn was in design stage listening to investor suggestions and listening to my friends, my earlier function fashions at Merrill. I listened to too many individuals as an alternative of trusting myself and driving myself. I then stopped listening to the doubters and trusted my imaginative and prescient and went to work on executing Hayvn, and constructing it into the regulated, cryptocurrency-focused monetary establishment it’s as we speak.
Up to date: January 16, 2023, 4:00 AM
