Jay Wilson from AlbionVC: Why Institutional-Grade FinTech Infrastructure Will Define the Next Decade
Episode description
In this episode of the Applied Blockchain Podcast, Adi Ben-Ari speaks with Jay Wilson, Partner at AlbionVC and one of the UK’s leading investors in B2B FinTech and data infrastructure, about how the digital asset and fintech markets are maturing, and why institutional-grade infrastructure is becoming the real battleground for long-term value creation.
With a background spanning private equity, venture capital, and an MBA from Wharton and London Business School, Jay sits at the forefront of fintech innovation, backing category-defining companies across enterprise software, financial infrastructure, and regulated digital asset markets. At AlbionVC, he works closely with founders scaling durable, generational businesses at the intersection of finance, data, and technology.
Together, Adi and Jay explore, but not limited to:
- Why the fintech and digital asset markets are shifting decisively from retail speculation to B2B infrastructure
- How institutional adoption is reshaping expectations around security, regulation, and trust
- Where enduring switching costs emerge in financial and data infrastructure
- What investors look for in founders building the next generation of category-defining fintech companies
- Why regulated distribution and enterprise-grade architectures matter more than ever
Resources Mentioned
- AlbionVC: Investing in enterprise software, fintech, and data infrastructure
- Institutional digital asset infrastructure and regulated fintech models
- Market insights on B2B fintech, digital assets, and long-term infrastructure investing
Transcript
Narrator (00:00:01):
You’re listening to the Applied Blockchain Podcast, hosted by Adi Ben-Ari, founder and CEO of Applied Blockchain. Join him as he sits down with global experts to uncover how blockchain is driving real-world impact.
Narrator (00:00:11):
Today’s guest is Jay Wilson, a partner at AlbionVC and an investor specializing in B2B fintech and enterprise data companies.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:00:23):
Jay Wilson, welcome to the Applied Blockchain Podcast.
Jay Wilson (00:00:26):
Thank you, Adi. Thanks for having me.
Jay Wilson (00:00:30):
Great to see you again — albeit virtually. It’s been five years, I think, since we met for the first time. So yes, great to be here. Thanks for the invitation.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:00:42):
I’m trying to think — I don’t think we’ve had a VC on the podcast before. So it’ll be great to get your perspective.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:00:54):
To get started, could you tell us a little bit about yourself — how you got into the space, your background — and also a bit about AlbionVC for those who don’t know the fund?
Jay Wilson (00:01:12):
Sure. Let me start with AlbionVC, and then I’ll rewind to personal history.
Jay Wilson (00:01:19):
I’m Jay Wilson, partner at AlbionVC — one of Europe’s oldest venture capital firms. We manage about a billion pounds of capital today, and the majority of that is mandated to invest in early-stage B2B technology businesses.
Jay Wilson (00:01:37):
Our key overlap with digital assets is within fintech. Typically, we invest at the intersection of traditional finance and Web3 technology.
Jay Wilson (00:01:52):
That journey started in 2019, when we led an early investment round into Elliptic. We’ve continued investing in the space since then — and I’m sure we’ll talk more about that and how those investments connect with the wider industry.
Jay Wilson (00:02:20):
Now, rewinding to personal history — and why I was motivated to pursue investments in this space.
Jay Wilson (00:02:32):
I started my professional life at the sharp end of capital markets. And I remember, in my first week on the job, I was asked to take a trade form.
Jay Wilson (00:02:54):
Back then, you’d receive paper trade forms. You’d write down: “I’m going to buy 10 lots of this security at this price,” either from a bilateral counterparty or using an order/limit instruction.
Jay Wilson (00:03:14):
Two things about this are relevant to today’s conversation.
Jay Wilson (00:03:20):
First, I was told to fax the order to the exchange.
Jay Wilson (00:03:28):
Second, I asked: “When do we get confirmation? When do we know how this was transacted?”
Jay Wilson (00:03:39):
In my mind, it would be instantaneous — you’d confirm the counterparty, settle everything, and that would be that. But that wasn’t the case.
Jay Wilson (00:03:57):
There was no continuous trading and no order book. This was a stock exchange in Nigeria, and it met twice a day.
Jay Wilson (00:04:09):
They collected paper forms, added the numbers up on another piece of paper, and decided who got what allocation — and at what price. That’s how liquidity and price transparency worked.
Jay Wilson (00:04:34):
I share this because understanding the value and power of digital assets — and distributed ledger technology — is easier when you’ve seen what “analog finance” looks like in practice.
Jay Wilson (00:04:52):
That story is a small illustration of what analog finance really means. At best, it’s paper-based. In many cases, it’s voice-based. And the idea that markets were trading 24/7 was a complete fallacy.
Jay Wilson (00:05:21):
That grounding was important — it helped me understand the potential of these technologies.
Jay Wilson (00:05:27):
I spent close to a decade in capital markets, and you see the full lifecycle of issues. This was a trade execution problem — but then there’s everything after execution: confirmations, reconciliation, settlement.
Jay Wilson (00:05:46):
And those processes were paper-based too. There are teams inside every financial institution reconciling numbers on paper.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:05:58):
I’m sitting here in Canary Wharf towers — and yes, that’s still true.
Jay Wilson (00:06:04):
Exactly. That was an early eye-opener: finance wasn’t as revolutionary as I thought it would be — or could be.
Jay Wilson (00:06:16):
From there, we started building what you might think of as institutional fintech products. That’s how my career in fintech — and institutional fintech — began, and that’s where we focus today at AlbionVC.
Jay Wilson (00:06:37):
As I learned about distributed ledger technology, blockchain, and digital assets — programmable money, and more recently tokenized products — it made sense to spend more time in the industry.
Jay Wilson (00:06:56):
We’re a domestically focused fund. One of the great things about being a domestic UK fund is we operate in areas where the UK has a comparative advantage — and in certain specialized areas, the UK should be able to lead. I’m sure we’ll come back to that.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:07:27):
Very good. We’ll get to regulation and the UK angle. Before then — you’ve been at AlbionVC for a few years, covering fintech and digital assets?
Jay Wilson (00:07:41):
Yes — for us, fintech and digital assets are united. We typically play at the intersection of those two industries.
Jay Wilson (00:07:55):
I spend about 80% of my time in fintech, and where it overlaps with digital assets and crypto, that’s how we organise ourselves.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:08:09):
And how does the fund look at the space? Does it have its own strategy?
Jay Wilson (00:08:21):
There are a couple of lenses. First: what we don’t do.
Jay Wilson (00:08:29):
We typically don’t invest in financial services businesses. We invest in IP-rich technology companies. If those companies sell into financial institutions, that’s within our perimeter.
Jay Wilson (00:08:47):
We don’t invest in tokens. So within digital assets, that creates a clear boundary around what we will and won’t do.
Jay Wilson (00:09:04):
Second lens: where do we think the UK has a comparative advantage? Ultimately, we’re looking for early-stage companies with the ambition to become global category leaders — and that means backing ecosystems where those companies can emerge.
Jay Wilson (00:09:26):
Third lens: our experience and networks. We know institutional and enterprise technology well, and we have relationships on both the traditional finance side and the digital asset side.
Jay Wilson (00:09:47):
We’re more experienced in some areas than others — regtech and compliance is one example, given Elliptic.
Jay Wilson (00:10:00):
And if I describe the investments we’ve made over the years — they sit, using the “picks and shovels” analogy, at the service layer.
Jay Wilson (00:10:06):
Elliptic is one of the market leaders in transaction monitoring.
Jay Wilson (00:10:12):
We led an investment in OpenTrade back in December 2023 — tokenized yield, but again, it’s white-label infrastructure.
Jay Wilson (00:10:24):
And we recently led an investment in a business called AIO Ratings — credit risk for the digital asset industry.
Jay Wilson (00:10:32):
Those are good examples of the archetype of investments we’ll continue to make. We’re motivated to do more.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:10:45):
Is it fair to say the end user of these services is enterprise and institutional?
Jay Wilson (00:10:52):
That’s right.
Jay Wilson (00:10:58):
Increasingly, the customer base is traditional financial institutions and institutional market participants.
Jay Wilson (00:11:03):
Elliptic is a good example. They have hundreds of customers now. When we invested in 2019, a large part of the customer base was crypto-native institutions.
Jay Wilson (00:11:22):
If you fast-forward to 2025, a material portion of their customer base is enterprise-scale institutions — in the US and the UK — as well as law enforcement and government agencies.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:11:46):
We were speaking with Elliptic recently because we have a product called Silent Data — a privacy protocol.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:11:58):
We had a conversation with the Ethereum Foundation about how privacy protocols approach compliance.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:12:13):
The challenge with privacy protocols is that activity can go dark from a monitoring perspective — so you need to set these systems up correctly, and integrate with monitoring solutions, so the services still work.
Jay Wilson (00:12:37):
Privacy-enhancing technology is an interesting space. Often, the end-market and potential customers aren’t always the best validation points — and it can be a tricky domain.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:13:08):
Very briefly: our assumption is that for this technology to roll out, it needs commercial usage — and commercial transactions require commercial privacy.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:13:30):
But once you introduce privacy, you still need monitoring — to ensure certain activities aren’t happening on the platform.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:13:42):
We also assume public blockchains — shared ledgers — bring the greatest technical efficiencies. So we think there needs to be a marriage of shared ledgers with privacy tech to unlock those efficiencies for commercial use.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:14:10):
Do you think the market has matured enough to understand the differences between protocols?
Jay Wilson (00:14:22):
No — absolutely not.
Jay Wilson (00:14:28):
There are a lot of protocols. I’ve been in the space 10 years and not a week goes by where someone says: “Have you heard of this one?”
Jay Wilson (00:14:46):
There’s over-proliferation. Tokens create strong incentives — lots of funding flows in, and then lots of marketing. So there’s a lot of information, and a lot of noise.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:15:04):
As an investor, you must have to sift through all of that.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:15:10):
I come at it from a technical lens — and under the bonnet, some of these systems are very different from the surface-level marketing.
Jay Wilson (00:15:22):
That’s a great point. I have a rule of thumb for where we are in the technology market cycle — beyond the Gartner hype cycle.
Jay Wilson (00:16:03):
In 2018, 2019, and early 2020, most companies in the digital asset industry presented themselves as blockchain companies.
Jay Wilson (00:16:15):
We’re seeing the same pattern right now with AI — companies presenting themselves as AI companies. That’s the start of a hype cycle.
Jay Wilson (00:16:34):
The other side of the cycle is when those companies come back and present themselves as using this technology — alongside other technologies — to deliver a value proposition to customers.
Jay Wilson (00:16:47):
That framing shift marks the beginning and end of a market cycle.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:16:56):
I agree. We’ve had this too — people come to us wanting to build solutions, and sometimes we have to do diligence and say no, because the project isn’t sustainable.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:17:09):
One question is: what happens if you take blockchain out?
Jay Wilson (00:17:20):
Yes — exactly.
Jay Wilson (00:17:31):
But relative to five years ago, many companies today are presenting with real commercial use cases, demonstrating ROI in fully deployed settings.
Jay Wilson (00:17:53):
That’s a night-and-day difference. Five years ago, it was innovation labs. Theoretical. Very little enterprise adoption.
Jay Wilson (00:18:13):
Now, there’s also been this dislocation between price and equity investment — and I think that reflects buyers focusing on commercial value independently of price activity, which is positive.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:18:46):
I’ve seen two things in reports suggesting we’re moving away from correlation with crypto prices.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:18:53):
One is VC investment into the space. The second is stablecoin use.
Jay Wilson (00:19:03):
Right — demand for stablecoins isn’t correlated to crypto prices.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:19:10):
So you see these things breaking away — suggesting there’s other activity going on.
Jay Wilson (00:19:23):
Exactly. And stablecoins are a great example of the point I made.
Jay Wilson (00:19:34):
It’s difficult to pinpoint a single catalyst, but in the stablecoin industry there was a very real commercial use case that could be established and proven quickly.
Jay Wilson (00:19:48):
Cross-border remittances were the initial use case.
Jay Wilson (00:20:01):
If you unpack the trading data, 70–80% of transactions are automated or bot-driven. But 20–30% are real-world commercial use cases — and ROI was established very quickly.
Jay Wilson (00:20:08):
Even more so in certain emerging market corridors — the ROI is dramatic: 10x cheaper, 100x faster.
Jay Wilson (00:20:30):
And those use cases are in production today. You can see that reflected in the investment dollars flowing into the space — it maps directly to how quickly ROI can be proven.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:20:42):
You’ve alluded to the fact that you’re seeing businesses now that are proven. Can you share where those areas are?
Jay Wilson (00:21:06):
Yes. To give an example, we led an investment into OpenTrade — which provides yield infrastructure that enables market participants to offer yield on stablecoins to their customers.
Jay Wilson (00:21:27):
It’s effectively tokenized yield — a tokenization platform in many ways.
Jay Wilson (00:21:38):
It’s incredibly hard to deliver at scale, but it sits in the “obviously needed to be built” category.
Jay Wilson (00:22:04):
A useful way to think about this is: look at critical technology verticals in traditional financial services, and ask what hasn’t yet been built — or scaled — in digital assets.
Jay Wilson (00:22:17):
When I first spoke to the founders, the idea that you couldn’t generate the risk-free rate of return on stablecoins seemed strange — because it’s such a fundamental concept in traditional finance.
Jay Wilson (00:22:36):
So: it obviously needed to exist.
Jay Wilson (00:22:42):
The wider implications are important. Tokenization matters for access and distribution — and traditional financial services can benefit massively.
Jay Wilson (00:23:01):
We expect to make many more investments in tokenization over the coming years.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:23:13):
Let me ask something I get challenged on.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:23:19):
In capital markets, people talk about how efficient the current system is — exchanges, equities settlement, margining, netting.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:23:50):
How do you look at tokenization in that context? Is it certain areas? Everything eventually?
Jay Wilson (00:23:58):
I really think it will be ubiquitous in the fullness of time.
Jay Wilson (00:24:16):
Many technology markets start as internal operational efficiency drivers.
Jay Wilson (00:24:22):
Settlement is a natural area. You’ll hear mixed views: instant settlement would be great — or instant settlement would be a disaster because margins and netting support leverage.
Jay Wilson (00:24:58):
In ultra-liquid markets, the ROI delta from deploying this technology may be small.
Jay Wilson (00:25:13):
But around the fringes — less optimized markets, less real-time processes — the ROI delta is still significant. Teams of people still do manual work, and these markets haven’t been optimized historically.
Jay Wilson (00:25:33):
There are many product markets and geographic markets where this can generate real ROI.
Jay Wilson (00:25:40):
It’s not a question of if now — it’s a question of time.
Jay Wilson (00:25:58):
Look at the scale of institutional tokenized products — for example, BlackRock’s tokenized treasury-related fund: huge inflows early on, and rapid growth in AUM.
Jay Wilson (00:26:36):
Some of these products have been among the fastest-growing in financial history.
Jay Wilson (00:26:55):
Two points: first, institutions of that scale getting comfortable with the risk profile is major validation.
Jay Wilson (00:27:01):
Second, the infrastructure required — to distribute, manage, report, comply — is another major validation.
Jay Wilson (00:27:21):
That speaks to why the dislocation between pricing and equity investment matters. The institutional capacity coming online is orders of magnitude greater than today’s AUM and transaction volume.
Jay Wilson (00:27:39):
The potential white space is far bigger than what we see today.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:27:57):
You mentioned the UK and regulation. Looking back at the last 12–18 months, I’d point to the US — the change in government and stablecoin legislation as drivers. What’s the UK perspective?
Jay Wilson (00:28:27):
It’s a great and relevant point. When you speak to UK business leads in global digital asset institutions — and UK-native institutions — it’s the number one item on board agendas: clarity on regulation.
Jay Wilson (00:29:05):
US regulation and the clarity from the administration has been incredibly important — not only for today, but for confidence in the future landscape.
Jay Wilson (00:29:23):
The UK is behind, most people would agree. But the foundations are in place for the UK to be a global leader in regulating certain parts of the ecosystem.
Jay Wilson (00:29:49):
The UK is strong in institutional services and financial services exports. So there are areas of specialisation where we can excel.
Jay Wilson (00:30:19):
But there’s a window — and it will close quickly. Companies won’t wait another strategic planning cycle.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:30:49):
Are there particular things the UK should do? Should it follow the US approach, or are there other areas?
Jay Wilson (00:31:06):
A few areas — but first, a general approach.
Jay Wilson (00:31:20):
If you go back 10 years, what made the UK successful in fintech was clarity — and a strong connection between policy headlines and the lived experience of early-stage companies.
Jay Wilson (00:31:38):
Things like the sandbox and clear turnaround times gave companies comfort: a clear path to outcomes.
Jay Wilson (00:32:08):
That connection has weakened. There’s a disconnect between headline policy and what companies experience on the ground.
Jay Wilson (00:32:15):
So: can the gap be closed? Through turnaround times, clearer application journeys, fewer unexpected hurdles — ways of working matter.
Jay Wilson (00:32:49):
Second: decide where the UK wants to lead. MiCA is broad and holistic, but hard to implement because it’s so wide-ranging.
Jay Wilson (00:33:03):
The UK should pick areas to lead in — with focus — rather than trying to do everything holistically.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:34:57):
From a UK company perspective: we’ve tokenized the Aberdeen Money Market Fund using Silent Data, with Archax.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:35:09):
Now a UK company can more easily manage treasury: hold a wallet, move into stablecoin and money market fund exposure, get better returns than the high street, and automate parts of that.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:35:34):
And you can see how this expands: multiple stablecoins, FX markets, lending, yield-bearing instruments.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:35:46):
As a business, you also need privacy — you don’t want your treasury visible in real time. That’s why commercial privacy matters.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:36:12):
You can see a world where, once a business onboards into wallet infrastructure, adjacent services move with it — quickly.
Jay Wilson (00:36:56):
Digital assets as a treasury strategy is important. Adding some exposure may become a good answer at some point.
Jay Wilson (00:37:15):
Are we there yet? Not for 99% of organisations. There are volatility, infrastructure, and education gaps — and it often isn’t a top-three priority.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:37:59):
It depends. FX is a big cost for many businesses — opaque and expensive. So savings opportunities are real. Lending and borrowing access could also be meaningful.
Jay Wilson (00:38:44):
I agree. It comes back to where you can establish a real commercial use case.
Jay Wilson (00:39:02):
If you’re an importer/exporter operating in frictionful corridors — say Nigeria — you’ll seek out more efficient solutions. Awareness builds from operational necessity.
Jay Wilson (00:39:23):
That’s how broader treasury and FX adoption can emerge.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:39:44):
We mentioned your report — are there highlights you want to call out?
Jay Wilson (00:40:04):
We covered a lot of ground. One key point is the decoupling between price and equity investment — which we see as a positive.
Jay Wilson (00:40:09):
If you look at institutional capacity coming online — more than today’s AUM — it’s a leading indicator of potential.
Jay Wilson (00:40:49):
Participants today are educated institutional buyers. They’re participating irrespective of price activity because they can evaluate products and commercial ROI.
Jay Wilson (00:41:28):
Regulation is a key challenge — but also a potential enabler.
Jay Wilson (00:41:53):
There’s also the broader corporate services ecosystem early-stage businesses rely on — including banking access.
Jay Wilson (00:42:31):
Banking access for crypto-native and blockchain-native companies is still difficult.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:43:03):
It’s incredibly limited — and underserved.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:43:22):
I hadn’t thought about the SME angle much before, but it could be huge. SMEs form a large chunk of the economy. They can adopt faster, with fewer controls.
Jay Wilson (00:44:03):
Those are key points. Ultimately, the UK has a foundation to lead in certain areas — but the window is limited.
Jay Wilson (00:44:37):
My sentiment is positive. As an investor, it’s inspiring to see businesses presenting real commercial value today — a big step forward from five years ago.
Jay Wilson (00:45:08):
There is sufficient early-stage capital support for innovation. Later-stage funding has work to do, but initiatives are addressing it.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:45:34):
London is still a leading place for fintech investment — and in this space too. It’s good to see active investment here, alongside momentum in the US.
Jay Wilson (00:46:00):
Absolutely.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:46:08):
Anything else you’d like to leave us with — signals you’re watching, what you’re looking for?
Jay Wilson (00:46:22):
We’re B2B technology investors. We love core infrastructure.
Jay Wilson (00:46:29):
Elliptic, OpenTrade, AIO Ratings — if you’re building core infrastructure, touching enterprise, and bridging traditional finance with Web3, we’re motivated to talk.
Jay Wilson (00:46:48):
Whether it’s custody, settlement, risk, analytics — these areas are under-serviced and under-invested.
Jay Wilson (00:47:05):
You can look at traditional financial infrastructure and see obvious analogies — what hasn’t been built, hasn’t scaled, or where innovation is needed.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:47:25):
Before we leave, I ask all guests: any sources of information you recommend? Books, podcasts, journals?
Jay Wilson (00:47:46):
I love a good book. I set myself a target of reading 50 books in 2024.
Jay Wilson (00:48:05):
One I recommend to founders often is Andy Grove’s High Output Management. It’s effectively a manual for being a good manager — and it’s timeless.
Jay Wilson (00:49:12):
One insight I return to is “task-level maturity.”
Jay Wilson (00:49:23):
Early-stage companies face a dilemma: hire seasoned executives who are experienced but expensive, or hire hungry early-career people who are proactive and affordable.
Jay Wilson (00:49:54):
Task-level maturity cuts through the noise: can this person do this task — or a related task — based on real experience?
Jay Wilson (00:50:25):
It helps you abstract away industry background and focus on capability.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:50:31):
That’s interesting — because in startups people often end up doing a broad range of responsibilities. Someone can join for one thing and end up in a different role.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:50:57):
So if you know what you want the person to do, I can see how that framework works well. But if things are still in flux, you need someone who can jump on anything.
Jay Wilson (00:51:30):
Exactly — and you can take it one step further: behavioural-level maturity.
Jay Wilson (00:51:38):
Pace is a critical indicator in early-stage businesses. So beyond task-level maturity, ask: have they demonstrated ways of working in a high-pace, agile environment?
Jay Wilson (00:52:09):
Look for repeated examples of that trait — in any context — because what they’ll be asked to do in 12–18 months will be different again.
Jay Wilson (00:52:50):
My bedtime read at the moment is Michael Lewis’s Going Infinite — a romp through the FTX saga. It’s an easy read — I recommend it.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:53:19):
If you like Michael Lewis, there’s a MasterClass on writing. He talks through how he finds characters and storylines — his investigative process.
Jay Wilson (00:54:28):
He’s brilliant at translating complexity into understandable stories. It’s a great Sunday afternoon or bedtime read.
Adi Ben-Ari (00:54:53):
Jay Wilson — thank you very much for joining us.
Jay Wilson (00:54:59):
Thank you, Adi. Great to see you again. Catch up soon.
Narrator (00:55:06):
Thanks for tuning in. Catch every episode wherever you get your podcasts. Follow Applied Blockchain on socials for the latest insights and explore our layer 2 Silent Data at silentdata.com.