Metaco enables secure custody of digital assets, an emerging trend that will revolutionize the financial world and goes far beyond cryptocurrencies. The robustness of Metaco’s solution is underlined by the fact that it is the first insurable digital asset management solution on the market, underwritten by insurance giant AON. Metaco’s product is integrated into the Avaloq core banking software.

Co-Founder Adrien Treccani about Verve Ventures

Interview with Co-Founder Adrien Treccani

How did you meet your co-founder and then create the right team?
Nicolas worked in my previous company which focused on retail solutions for bitcoin. He is one of the few bitcoin experts that develop and maintain the core components of the bitcoin network globally. We realized that investing in cryptocurrencies was extremely painful given the complexity of managing private keys and their security and that a large number of people, or organizations didn’t have the experience, nor the infrastructure, or even the desire, to be responsible for the whole security around their digital assets. This is how METACO was founded. Then we started building the team. We convinced the best engineers we knew from our respective networks to join METACO and help us build our product stack. We also participated in fintech events, conferences and pitches, where we met Seamus Donoghue, our VP of Business Development. From there on we had a strong engineering and sales team, which got us the credibility to raise our first round of financing in April 2018. We continued hiring to support the growing customer demand.

How did you finally come to your current focus?
We saw the lack of infrastructure providers in this sector and the growing need for security and trust. With both our experience and background, we launched the development of SILO with the aim to provide banks the infrastructure to support their transition into a digital asset offering.

Why are banks not building these solutions themselves?
The question they ask themselves is: buy or build? Banks generally do not see themselves as technology companies. If you think about their core banking infrastructure, most banks have long decided they prefer relying on third-party vendors to building their own custom system and maintaining it. With cryptos, we see the same thing. Given the fast pace of this innovative market, banks realize how complex it is to build a crypto platform, to maintain it, to make it compatible with new cryptocurrencies, and to ensure the appropriate level of security. It quickly becomes apparent that it’s much less expensive to buy than to build.