Swiss-based FinTech companies CLST and Aleph Zero have announced a partnership to enhance lending and borrowing of specific digital currencies in countries where the new financial practice is approved.

The partnership will explore optimal management of Aleph Zero Foundation’s treasuries, tap into liquidity provisioning of the protocol’s native token AZERO and facilitate the institutional adoption of stablecoins which will be issued on the Aleph Zero protocol. The companies’ founders say that the partnership will enhance liquidity management to achieve efficient price discovery.

“Through our network, Aleph Zero has been able to engage with the world’s leading liquidity providers across key geographic markets,” said Michael Guzik, the founder and CEO of Zurich-based CLST. “By supplying AZERO to tier 1 institutions in the crypto asset space, we believe this is a game-changer to match supply with demand of AZERO and deploy liquidity efficiently.”

Prior to creating CLST, Guzik was the youngest Head of blockchain at PwC, and previously held various appointments leading blockchain-based ventures with a focus on FinTech. He led Primary Markets at Lykke, advised the Swiss Stock Exchange on their “Digital Asset Exchange” infrastructure and served as a Partner at Blockchain Valley Ventures. He also founded KORE Technologies, one of the leading infrastructure providers for Digital Assets. “New Money Markets are key to institutional adoption,” Guzik declares.

Among trading and payments, institutional capital markets are the fundamental building block for the mass adoption of stablecoins and crypto assets. A particular field is short-term debt markets, commonly known as institutional lending and borrowing with short-term durations. Through CLST Markets, issuers of such assets are able to tap into an institutional market and build liquidity among the world’s biggest hedge funds, exchanges, proprietary trading firms, asset managers, crypto banks and foundations.

“CLST aims to connect lenders and borrowers directly by creating an automatic bilateral price negotiation and settlement layer for institutional users,” said Antoni Zolciak, co-founder of Aleph Zero. “Unlocking liquidity is a crucial component of building a successful ecosystem — regardless of the short-term market sentiment. We’re excited to form a relationship with CLST and have full confidence in their team’s capabilities.”

Guzik says that building highly complex blockchain-based infrastructure requires a lot of talent, time and attention. He describes driving end-user adoption “a mammoth task.”

“Liquidity and institutional adoption on token level require completely different skill sets and networks,” Guzik adds. “As an institutional lending and borrowing venue, we naturally work with the largest players to bring together all the partners necessary for token issuers to succeed.”

About ALEPH ZERO
Aleph Zero Foundation is a non-profit foundation based in Zug, Switzerland, where it oversees the development of Aleph Zero blockchain. Its novel architecture is based on Aleph BFT, a DAG-based consensus protocol that has been peer-reviewed for design correctness. Its enterprise-ready, high-performance blockchain platform presents a novel, Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)-based consensus protocol that has been peer-reviewed and presented at an ACM conference. To date, Aleph Zero has raised $15m for continued development, integrating with the Substrate stack and expanding its team. This year Aleph Zero plans to enable privacy-enhancing features based on secure multi-party computation research and zero-knowledge proofs. For more information, please visit: https://alephzero.org.

About CLST
Based in Zurich, CLST is the institutional gateway to lend or borrow stablecoins and crypto assets, automating bilateral price negotiation and price matching for institutional traders. CLST Markets integrates next generation products such as “Request-for Quote” (RFQ), “Fixed Term,” “Call Money,” institutional DeFi protocols, blockchain-based electronic promissory notes and wallet connectivity for automated settlements. CLST aims to resolve market uncertainties and scaling issues in unsecured lending and borrowing of crypto assets, while facilitating institutional adoption of stablecoins and crypto assets. For more information, please visit: https://clst.com.