Why the room needs them.
Tim Grant is chief executive of Deus X Capital, and previously ran SIX Digital Exchange and Galaxy Digital's European business. Deus X is a family-office-backed investor and operator whose businesses include Deus X Pay, Solstice and Cor Prime. He spoke at Proof of Talk Paris 2026 on the Taostats Stage, on the move from enterprise blockchain to tokenised markets.
The full account.
Tim Grant is chief executive officer of Deus X Capital, a family-office-backed investment and operating company that launched on 2 October 2023 with an initial $1bn of assets, including existing investments and capital ready to be deployed. He spoke at Proof of Talk Paris 2026 as CEO of Deus X Capital, on the Taostats Stage panel of 3 June titled "From Enterprise Blockchain to Tokenised Markets: The Next Chapter of Institutional Finance", alongside David Rutter, executive chairman of R3, and Ben Nadareski, co-founder and chief executive of Solstice Labs. Both links are close ones: Grant ran R3's Lab and Research Centre earlier in his career, and Solstice Labs is wholly funded by Deus X, with Grant as a co-founder and its chairman.
Before digital assets he was a managing director at UBS Investment Bank and at the multi-strategy hedge fund UBS O'Connor. He moved into the sector at the end of 2015, after meeting the executive teams of Ripple and Coinbase in San Francisco, then founded DrumG Technologies, a ConsenSys-backed firm that raised $6.5m in 2018 and built Titanium for OTC trading and data. Ledger Insights reported that DrumG said major banks were trialling it, Credit Suisse among them. SIX Group recruited him in March 2020 as head of business at SIX Digital Exchange, which he went on to run as chief executive; on 12 August 2021 SIX announced that David Newns would take over, effective that October. Galaxy Digital announced his appointment as head of Europe the same day. He left in September 2023 as head of EMEA.
Deus X both invests and operates, an approach Grant has described as deliberately hands-on and infrastructure-led. He chairs Alpha Lab 40, the wholly owned market maker whose chief executive is Deus X CIO Stuart Connolly, as well as Deus X Pay and Deus X Markets; Deus X made a strategic investment in the analytics firm APEX:E3 in July 2024. Cor Prime, announced in September 2024 with $100m of risk capital, lists Grant as executive chairman. In February 2024 ADGM announced that Deus X and Bridgetower Capital had incorporated an Abu Dhabi entity for a $250m digital asset infrastructure platform, with Grant joining Bridgetower's board as vice chairman. In January 2026 the firm described its work as spanning regulated payments, treasury, tokenisation, prime services and institutional DeFi, from offices in London, Malta and the UAE.
What Tim believes about the next ten years.
Years of shipping.
Lines that keep proving correct.
“Tokenization is nothing without liquidity. If you can't get a price on it, if you can't buy and sell it, the fact that it's tokenized doesn't make any difference”
“The way money is going to make its way in is… through the big asset managers and the wealth management platforms”
“What I saw was a powerful new toolset and the opportunity to address those inefficiencies in a practical way, faster settlement, lower costs, greater transparency, not by replacing traditional finance, but by integrating with it”
What they have built, written, and backed.
Built
- Deus X CapitalLaunched on 2 October 2023 with an initial $1bn of assets, working across private equity, venture capital, venture building and fund allocation. The businesses it builds and owns sit in a Deus X Enterprises division. Grant is chief executive officer; Stuart Connolly, formerly of Red Acre Ventures, is chief investment officer.
- Solstice LabsAnnounced at Solana Breakpoint in September 2024 to build institutional-grade DeFi products, and wholly funded by Deus X Capital. Grant is a co-founder and chairman; Ben Nadareski, his Proof of Talk co-panellist, is co-founder and chief executive, and Stuart Connolly is a co-founder.
- Deus X PayThe former HAYVN, acquired by Deus X in February 2024 and relaunched on 9 December 2024 as a regulated institutional stablecoin payments business focused on international payments. Richard Crook is chief executive; Grant is chairman.
- Alpha Lab 40A wholly owned Deus X portfolio company operating as an institutional digital asset market maker and liquidity provider. Grant is chairman and Stuart Connolly is chief executive, the same pairing that runs Deus X Capital itself.
The next Proof of Talk is in Abu Dhabi.
Louvre Abu Dhabi, 3–4 December 2026. Admission is by application, and the room is capped at 2,000.
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