zerohash

Founded in 2017, zerohash builds the plumbing for crypto and stablecoins: custody, settlement, fiat on/off-ramps and tokenization, so brokerages and payment firms need not build the stack themselves.

By 2025 zerohash's clients included Interactive Brokers, Stripe, BlackRock's BUIDL fund, Franklin Templeton, DraftKings and prediction market Kalshi, reaching more than 5 million users in 190 countries.

In October 2025 zerohash closed a $104 million Series D-2 led by Interactive Brokers, with Morgan Stanley, Apollo-managed funds, SoFi and Jump Crypto joining, valuing it at $1 billion.

That month Fortune reported Mastercard was in late-stage talks to buy zerohash for up to $2 billion; the talks collapsed in January 2026, and zerohash said publicly it was not for sale, discussing only a strategic investment and commercial partnership.

The refusal marked a shift: an infrastructure firm choosing independence over absorption by a card network. zerohash's moat is licensing, with regulated entities across the EU, Latin America, Australia and Bermuda, money-transmitter coverage in 51 U.S. jurisdictions and a NYDFS license.

On March 4, 2026, zerohash applied to the OCC for a national trust bank charter, and on May 18 it obtained an EMI licence from the Dutch central bank to offer stablecoin and brokerage services across the EEA, expanding its Amsterdam European headquarters; it launched an Agentic Finance Suite for AI-agent money movement on July 30, connected stablecoin payouts and prefunding to Visa Direct on August 5, added Robinhood Chain and USDG on August 19, and supported Wyoming's FRNT stablecoin on August 21. In January 2026 it was reported to be negotiating a $250 million round at a $1.5 billion valuation and to be discussing a strategic investment with Mastercard after ending acquisition talks, which the company has not confirmed. Future strategy and roadmap: bring custody, settlement and stablecoin issuance inside a trust-bank entity while using Agentic Finance to win AI-agent payments; the company says it will add European and institutional brokerage clients, with no IPO timetable.

zerohash's valuation case is to become the AWS of on-chain infrastructure: its clients are institutions such as Morgan Stanley, Interactive Brokers and Stripe that embed crypto into their own products, and the moat is licences across 51 states plus clearing and compliance rather than any single product. The national trust bank charter is therefore the decisive step, replacing per-state licensing cost with one federal framework and qualifying it for the issuance path under the GENIUS Act; but the OCC's crypto trust charter programme faces litigation from the Bank Policy Institute, and a blocked approval would force the whole expansion to be resequenced. Having walked away from Mastercard's acquisition approach to stay independent, it now has to fund that regulatory build itself.

Edward Woodford: founder and CEO, founded zerohash in 2017; holds a Master of Finance from MIT, founded and sold a CFTC-registered derivatives exchange, was named a Goldman Sachs Exceptional Entrepreneur and runs the company.

Mark Daly: Chief Development Officer, a founding member owning ecosystem relationships and institutional outreach.

Stephen Gardner: Chief Legal and Compliance Officer and CEO of zerohash Trust, formerly a risk consultant at KPMG and regulatory attorney at Buckley Sandler; JD from George Washington University.

Katie Perry: CMO, 15 years of marketing leadership and formerly an executive at Public.com, owning brand and go-to-market strategy.

Adam Leaman: Chief Commercial Officer, a founding member with 20+ years in financial services, formerly senior at Societe Generale and BGC Partners.

Adam Berg: Co-President and CFO, 16+ years formerly in finance at SoFi and JPMorgan; MBA from NYU Stern.

Most of the leadership dates to the founding years, organized into legal-compliance, commercial, marketing and finance tracks, each chief reporting to the founder.

zerohash recently added two executives. In April 2026, Jennifer Booze joined as VP of Tokenization; she previously served as SVP of Global Business Development at Polygon Labs, leading institutional partnerships including Franklin Templeton's FOBXX and JPMorgan's Project Guardian . In July 2026, Hong Sun joined as VP of Enterprise Sales; he previously served as Head of Institutional at Core Foundation and led institutional brokerage at Paxos, focusing on stablecoins and tokenized assets . Both are driving institutional adoption.

zerohash applies a basis-point markup to RFQ quotes, with the spread parameter set inside a 100 to 400 bps bandwidth and adjusted by quote duration, and the buy price equals the best liquidity provider price times one plus the spread divided by 10,000.

zerohash configures CLOB commissions by account tier, with the gold tier shown at an example 10 bps, alongside an optional 0.5% of notional or a flat USD 10 per trade, and rates can be set separately for makers and takers.

zerohash holds a New York State Department of Financial Services virtual currency licence, a North Carolina trust charter for crypto custody, a Dutch crypto-asset service provider licence under the European Union Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation and a Dutch electronic money institution licence.