“The Deus X CEO discussed his journey into digital assets, the company’s infrastructure-led growth strategy, and why his Consensus Hong Kong panel promises “real talk only.””, — write: www.coindesk.com
Deus X is a family office-backed investment and operating company that focuses on unlocking value across capital markets, fintech and digital assets to help build a fairer, more accessible financial system.
Led by CEO Grant, Deus X began with roughly $1 billion in assets and operates globally with offices in London, Malta and the UAE. Grant will be speaking at CoinDesk’s Consensus Hong Kong conference in February 2026.
The firm deploys capital through private equity, venture capital, venture building and fund allocation, backing and building innovative companies that span everything from trading infrastructure and broker-as-a-service platforms to digital asset ventures.
“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,” Grant said about his entry into crypto.
Early on in his career, and with no prior knowledge of bitcoin BTC$88,082.70 or blockchain, he said he was lucky enough to meet with the executive teams of both Ripple and Coinbase (COIN) in San Francisco, and that’s where everything changed for him. By the end of 2015 he was in the digital asset space and has been there ever since.
“Our growth strategy at Deus X is deliberately hands-on and infrastructure-led,” he said. “We believe that the combination of both investing and operating is a powerful combination when it comes to executing on growth and generating strong risk-adjusted returns.”
Grant said that means building, backing and operating companies across multiple layers of the digital finance stack, from payments and treasury to institutional DeFi, prime services, market infrastructure and execution tooling.
Through businesses like Deus X Pay, Cor Prime and Solstice, Deus X’s venture portfolio is expanding, he said, with each company targeting specific problems but largely working together to compound growth and share infrastructure.
For Grant, Consensus is about substance rather than spectacle, he said, and given his broad portfolio of investments and companies, he said the companies are always operating across the entire spectrum, both as a provider of capital and as investors in their own ventures.
“We’re looking to engage with institutions, regulators and builders who are focused on deploying digital finance in production, particularly around regulated payments, treasury, tokenization, prime services and institutional DeFi,” he said.
KuCoin captured a record share of centralized exchange volume in 2025, with more than $1.25tn traded as its volumes grew faster than the broader crypto market.
- KuCoin recorded over $1.25 trillion in total trading volume in 2025equivalent to an average of roughly $114 billion per monthmarking its strongest year on record.
- This performance translated into an all-time high share of centralized exchange volumeas KuCoin’s activity expanded faster than aggregate CEX volumeswhich slowed during periods of lower market volatility.
- Spot and derivatives volumes were evenly spliteach exceeding $500 billion for the year, signaling broad-based usage rather than reliance on a single product line.
- Altcoins accounted for the majority of trading activityreinforcing KuCoin’s role as a primary liquidity venue beyond BTC and ETH at a time when majors saw more muted turnover.
- Even as overall crypto volumes softened mid-year, KuCoin maintained elevated baseline activityindicating structurally higher user engagement rather than short-lived volume spikes.
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The Solana ecosystem has spent the past year doubling down on a financial infrastructure, Backpack CEO Armani Ferrante told CoinDesk.
- Solana’s latest phase looks a lot less flashy than its memecoin-fueled highs, and that may be the goal.
- Armani Ferrante, CEO of crypto exchange Backpack, told CoinDesk in an interview the Solana ecosystem has spent the past year doubling down on a more sober focus: financial infrastructure. A
- fter years of experimentation as the wider crypto industry focused on NFTs, games and social tokens, attention is now shifting back towards decentralized finance, trading and payments.
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