Axoni

When we were introduced to the Schvey brothers in October 2013 by a well-regarded west coast investor, they were a year into their first crypto business, TheGenesisBlock. Greg, a former debt capital markets specialist at Citi, and Jeff, a former missile engineer at Raytheon, had been actively mining, trading and writing research papers.

Bitcoin was trading at a little over $300 and much of the activity at the time was over the counter, between parties who were speculating. Institutional parties were not active and in many cases were either skeptical or actively lobbying against emerging blockchain players in Washington, D.C.

Greg and Jeff created instant credibility, combining deep technical skills with an understanding of process and decision-making on the institutional side.

Reactions to our investment varied from disdain and sheer horror to mild interest. The reactions were a clear indicator of just how early institutional participation in crypto was at the time. Across the board, financial firms expressed reputational fear at being associated in any way with the market.

At the time, the blockchain and crypto space was dominated by Reddit users, and most of the activity in the space was focused on the core infrastructure of mining (make it), exchanges (get it), and wallets (hold it). There wasn’t a lot of “use it.”. Any additional investment was focused on merchant-consumer transactions and cross-border remittances. Our perspective was that there was a third vector – institutional finance – which represented a sizeable opportunity.

By 2016, global institutions had caught on and were mobilizing, scrambling to finish the year with commitments to specific projects where they could pilot the blockchain. Greg and Jeff continued to prove the most credible players in key market infrastructure conversations.

A year later, on the heels of major pilot wins with the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation and two other institutions, the Schveys spun out Axoni as a capital markets infrastructure company, focused on the $55b annual spend on post-trade processing. In the process, they created a clear delineation between the software applications of the blockchain (Axoni, the new company) and the digital currency applications (TradeBlock, the trade name for what was originally TheGenesisBlock).