Hex Trust

Hex Trust

Founded in Hong Kong in 2018 by CEO Alessio Quaglini and CTO Rafal Czerniawski, Hex Trust launched to fill a critical gap in Asia's digital-asset infrastructure. Before the firm's arrival, institutional investors and banks across the region lacked a regulated, bank-grade custodian capable of holding cryptocurrencies and tokenized securities. Quaglini, a former banking and fintech executive, paired traditional financial-operations discipline with Czerniawski's engineering background to build a custody platform that meets the compliance requirements of regulated Asian financial institutions. Hex Trust operates across three core business lines: licensed digital-asset custody, staking-as-a-service across multiple proof-of-stake networks, and API-driven DeFi access for institutions that want exposure to decentralized protocols without self-custody risk. The firm holds a full-capital markets services license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Trust or Corporate Service Provider registration in Hong Kong, and VASP registrations in both Italy and France. Its client base spans asset managers, exchanges, protocols, and family offices. In addition to its foundational custody work, Hex Trust has built Hex Trust Markets, a regulated brokerage arm, and HT Markets MENA for regional coverage, expanding the revenue model beyond custody fees into trading, lending, and market-access services. Hex Trust has raised over $100 million in venture funding across multiple rounds from backers including Animoca Brands, Morgan Creek Digital, Ripple, and Liberty City Ventures. In July 2023, the firm closed a strategic funding round that brought its total external capital raised above $100 million (per the firm, July 2023). Beyond Hong Kong, the firm maintains offices in Singapore, Dubai, Milan, Paris, and Vietnam. The geographic footprint maps directly to licensing — each office corresponds to a jurisdiction where Hex Trust holds a regulatory authorization to operate, giving it one of the broader multi-regulator custody footprints among Asian digital-asset firms. Hex Trust's structural differentiator is its posture as a custody-first institution rather than an exchange that later bolted on custody. By pursuing banking-partnership, trust-company, and capital-markets licenses before attempting to scale exchange or prime-brokerage services, the firm positioned itself for the post-FTX institutional custody mandate. Its revenue model spans custody SaaS for banks, direct asset servicing, and regulated brokerage, giving it three uncorrelated income streams tied to institutional digital-asset adoption across Asia and Europe.