A new player in the digital assets and crypto space launched this week. The London-based Lydian Group is helmed by veteran investors Gerard Lopez (pictured above) and Greg Fishman. The self-funded conglomerate will provide startups with support along their journey from idea curation, to development, launch, and potential exit.
Lydian has ten startups under its roof at this point, which it says, collectively equates to “over 35 million users, over 500 institutional clients, 800 employees and a monthly trading volume of over $20 billion, which has made it profitable from the outset.”
Its companies include Cointelegraph, a leading digital media outlet with over 25 million monthly visitors and a 44% market share, CrossTower, Swooapp, coin360, Trade Santa, and Bequant.
Lydian says it is equipped to launch four-to-five challenger brands a year and has the capacity to exit companies in the Group.
“As mainstream adoption of crypto and Web3 continues to grow, and digital and physical worlds continue to blur, we wanted to launch a conglomerate of companies that represent the entire digital asset value chain; we wanted to lay a solid foundation for an economy that has the potential to be the biggest the world has ever seen,” CEO and co-founder, Lopez said in a statement.
Launching a new incubator-style business in the face of the tech-market downturn might seem like a bold move, but Lopez said it is well-positioned to weather the storm.
“Lydian is active across a whole industry spectrum, is not dependent on outside capital as it is profitable and self-funded,” Lopez said. “This enables to decide on long-term strategies without being pressured by the market - at the same time we have massive investor interest given the width of the group and the solidity of its financial foundation.”
He believes the recent shakedown in the industry has actually benefited their group, because, he says “we’ve always had a well-founded long-term strategy for challenging conditions - unlike a lot of other companies. I believe the current market has laid a stronger foundation for the key players in the industry and has made us more bullish than ever.”
Lopez, who co-founded Mangrove Capital Partners, was also an original investor in a bunch of big-name companies, including Skype, Wix, KHealth, WalkMe, and the Bank of London.
Fishman has had a long career in software development. In 2007, he launched Automated Intelligence Systems (now Quantum Brains), which develops algorithms and infrastructure to trade stocks, futures and options, and is also an angel investor.
Mark Tluszcz, the CEO of Mangrove Capital Partners and chairman of Wix, will sit on the board as well as Andrea Rossi, former AXA Group Excom member and CEO of AXA IM.
Lead image by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash
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