Julian Sawyer: The Bridge Between Traditional Banking and Digital Asset Custody at Zodia

Julian Sawyer's career reads like a deliberate progression through the evolution of modern finance. From traditional banking consultancy to co-founding one of the UK's most successful challenger banks, and now leading Standard Chartered-backed Zodia Custody, Sawyer has positioned himself as the ultimate translator between banking's cautious culture and crypto's innovation imperative.

This profile is based on Sawyer's recent appearance on the alpha un# podcast, where he shared exclusive insights about Zodia's growth trajectory and the institutional custody landscape. '

From Traditional Finance to Digital Assets

Sawyer's journey began in the consulting trenches at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) and Ernst & Young, where he spent the early years of his career watching 80-95% of bank IT budgets disappear into maintaining aging legacy systems. This front-row seat to financial infrastructure inefficiencies would later inform his approach to building modern digital asset solutions.

In 1999, he founded Bluerock Consulting, a financial services management consultancy specializing in cards and payments, which he successfully led until its sale in 2011. This entrepreneurial experience taught him the intricacies of financial product development and client servicing that would prove invaluable in his later ventures.

The next chapter came in 2015 when Sawyer co-founded Starling Bank as Chief Operating Officer. The digital challenger bank, designed for people who "live their life on a mobile phone," became one of the UK's most successful fintech stories. As Sawyer explains, "What attracted me there was using technology to change the customer experience and to change the product set that is being offered."

His transition into crypto began at Gemini in 2019 as Managing Director for Europe, followed by his role as CEO of Bitstamp from 2020 to 2022. However, "irreconcilable differences" over market direction led to his departure from the world's longest-running cryptocurrency exchange.

The Birth of Zodia Custody

Sawyer joined Zodia Custody as CEO in November 2022, just days after the FTX collapse - timing that felt like "the universe validating the thesis" for regulated, bank-grade digital asset infrastructure.

Zodia was created in Singapore in 2018 by Standard Chartered's innovation arm, built on two core premises: "The future is the blockchain" and "everything starts with custody." As Sawyer notes, "If you get custody right, then the whole industry can build because your assets are safe and you can control that."

The company relocated to the UK four years later, leveraging the FCA's forward-leaning regulatory stance. Today, Zodia operates across Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia (with a joint venture in Japan), the UAE, Europe, and the UK - a global footprint that serves institutional clients who are "multi-jurisdiction" by nature.

Beyond Storage: The Evolution of Digital Asset Custody

"Custody is no longer just storage," Sawyer emphasized during the podcast. The traditional view of custody as simply "looking after keys" has evolved into a comprehensive service ecosystem encompassing yield management, staking services, collateral management, and even OTC trading capabilities.

This evolution stems from two key factors: the economics of the custody business and client demand for more sophisticated services. "Clients are wanting to do more than just store their digital assets in a vault," Sawyer explains. "They're wanting to get yield. They're wanting to use it as collateral. They're wanting it to give them flexibility in their financial decision-making."

Zodia's response is a three-pronged product strategy:

Custody: The core service providing segregated accounts and secure key management - a stark contrast to custodians who "pool all their assets into one account," which Sawyer finds incomprehensible given traditional finance standards.

Interchange: An off-exchange settlement product that allows clients to keep assets with Zodia while trading on partner exchanges like Bybit, Deribit, and LMAX. This tripartite structure between client, exchange, and custodian ensures that "if the exchange fails and doesn't exist anymore, the client can go and get their assets back" - essentially solving the FTX problem before it happens.

Gateway: Functioning as an "app store" for digital asset services, Gateway provides access to seven staking providers, yield management options, and borrowing/lending facilitation. The platform offers choice across "different commercials, jurisdictions, and slashing risk reduction."

Regulatory Clarity as Competitive Advantage

One of Sawyer's key insights centers on regulatory confusion in the custody space. Many institutions don't realize that when they use infrastructure providers like Fireblocks, "Fireblocks is software... they're not the custodian. That means you are the custodian."

This regulatory forcing function is driving institutional adoption of qualified custodians, particularly for ETFs in the US and Europe where self-custody isn't permitted. Rather than viewing regulation as restrictive, Sawyer sees it as essential for industry maturation.

"In any country, a bank is the same as the next bank," he explains. "It has the same controls, the same expectations, the same protection for consumers. And therefore, you know that your bank is safe." His vision is for qualified custodians to achieve the same standardization and trust.

The Numbers Behind Zodia's Growth

While Zodia doesn't disclose assets under custody, Sawyer shared some impressive growth metrics during the podcast:

• Revenue Growth: 20x increase year-over-year

• Current Annual Revenue: $22 million (2024)

• Client Base: 150-200 institutional clients

• Asset Concentration: 96-97% of holdings dominated by Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP

• Coin Coverage: 75-80 listed digital assets

The company has also been active in fundraising and M&A:

• Strategic Funding: $36 million raised in April 2023, led by SBI Holdings

• Recent Acquisition: Tungsten Custody Solutions in Abu Dhabi (completed as mentioned in the podcast)

• Shareholders: Standard Chartered, Northern Trust, SBI, National Australia Bank, and Emirates MBD

Technology Stack and Infrastructure Approach

Zodia operates on-premise infrastructure with two data centers in different countries. The technology stack initially incorporated software from Metaco, which now accounts for approximately 25% of their infrastructure, with proprietary technology built around it.

The company has strategically built optionality into its platform, integrating DFNS (Defense) for MPC capabilities alongside traditional HSMs, and connecting to the Fireblocks Qualified Custody Network. This approach allows clients already invested in Fireblocks infrastructure to access third-party custodial services without abandoning their existing setup.

Multiple Revenue Streams Strategy

Sawyer is deliberately moving away from the "lazy way" of sizing custody businesses purely by assets under custody (AUC). Instead, Zodia focuses on three distinct revenue streams:

1. Custody-dependent revenue: Traditional custody fees tied to AUC

2. Service-based revenue: Staking, interchange, yield management, and reward programs that generate returns independent of asset values

3. Software-as-a-Service: Licensing custody technology to financial institutions that want to build internal capabilities

This diversified approach provides "revenue mix and assurance against volatility" - crucial for sustainable business growth in the volatile crypto market.

Client Profile and Market Focus

Zodia exclusively serves institutional clients: financial institutions, banks, corporates, and sophisticated crypto natives. Their first clients were Invesco (traditional finance) and CoinShares (crypto native), establishing the dual-market approach that continues today.

Current clients include exchange Bybit (through the Interchange product) and Reserex, an Indian exchange using Zodia for asset recovery following a security incident. This demonstrates how Zodia's "safe harbor" positioning resonates with exchanges seeking to separate operational risk from custody risk.

The Future of Institutional Crypto Infrastructure

Looking ahead, Sawyer anticipates significant consolidation in the custody market, with institutions typically working with one to three custodians for risk management and specialized coverage. The Tungsten acquisition represents Zodia's first M&A move, but "I don't think it's going to be our last acquisition."

Geographic expansion remains a priority, particularly in the US market, which "has transformed over the last few months in terms of accessibility." However, the strategy isn't about "going into every country in the world" but ensuring coverage of the "global financial services footprint."

The Individual Custody Challenge

When discussing retail and high-net-worth individual custody needs, Sawyer identifies a significant market gap. For individuals holding $500,000 to $10 million in digital assets, current solutions are inadequate - exchanges don't provide proper custody, while institutional custodians charge fees that retail investors aren't accustomed to paying.

The solution likely lies in "trusted entities, which typically is a bank," offering embedded custody as part of broader financial service packages. However, this requires solving the complexity problem - consolidating scattered DeFi positions, staking rewards, and collateral management into coherent, easy-to-understand offerings.

Vision for Mass Market Adoption

Sawyer's philosophy on mainstream crypto adoption centers on simplification and familiar language. Instead of technical jargon about specific protocols, the industry needs to "start talking in the language that the mass market is thinking about."

His banking analogy is telling: consumers don't need to know whether their bank invests in "hotels or shopping centers or ports" to generate yield - they just want to understand the risk profile and expected returns. The crypto industry needs similar abstraction layers.

Standard Chartered's Strategic Role

As a subsidiary of Standard Chartered, Zodia adopts all parent company policies, procedures, and risk appetite. This banking DNA provides "fantastic product market fit" with institutional clients who value the governance and compliance standards of established financial institutions.

The relationship also enables global expansion through Standard Chartered's international presence and regulatory relationships, while Zodia maintains operational independence to serve the specialized needs of digital asset custody.

Industry Outlook and Challenges

Sawyer sees the digital asset custody landscape as entering a maturation phase where "boring is bullish" - reliable infrastructure trumps cutting-edge features for institutional adoption. The speed of change in the space creates both excitement and frustration, requiring constant adaptation to new protocols, regulations, and client demands.

The regulatory environment varies significantly by jurisdiction, with Hong Kong, Singapore, and the UAE providing clearer frameworks than the US market. This geographic arbitrage influences both client acquisition and expansion strategy.

The Zodia Difference

What distinguishes Zodia in an increasingly crowded custody market isn't revolutionary technology but rather meticulous execution of fundamentals. Segregated accounts, bank-grade compliance, global regulatory coverage, and diversified revenue streams create a stability-focused value proposition that resonates with risk-averse institutional capital.

As the digital asset industry continues its evolution from speculation to infrastructure, Julian Sawyer and Zodia Custody represent the bridge between two financial worlds - bringing traditional banking's reliability to digital asset innovation. Their growth trajectory suggests that in institutional crypto, boring might indeed be the most bullish strategy of all.