DeFi Technologies - Earnings Call - Q4 2024
March 31, 2025
Transcript
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
I'm going to start off by reading the risk and forward-looking statements. This presentation given and certain statements made within this earnings call, which are not historical facts such as expectations, anticipations, beliefs, and estimates, are forward-looking statements. These statements may include, without limitation, any statements preceded by, followed by, or including words such as target, believe, assume, expect, commit, aim, intend, may, anticipate, foresee, see, estimate, plan, project, will, is to, focus, can have, likely, should, would, could, continue, and other words in terms of similar meaning or the negative thereof.
Others can be identified from the context in which statements are made. Forward-looking statements give the company's current expectations and views of future developments in light of its current experience and perception of historical trends, based on numerous assumptions regarding the company's present and future business strategies and environment in which it will operate in the future.
Although the company deems such forward-looking statements to be reasonable, no assurances can be given that they will be proven correct. The forward-looking statements are not guarantees of the future developments and results mentioned therein. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors such as, but not limited to, general economic and industry conditions, which are in some cases beyond the company's control, which may cause actual results to materially differ from the expressed in such statement. The statements are made as per the date of the presentation as this earnings call, and the company does not assume any obligation to review, update, confirm any forward-looking statements contained herein except to the extent legally required.
Curtis Schlaufman (VP of Marketing and Communications)
Great. Welcome, everyone. First off, what a great 2024. Congratulations here to management, and congratulations to our shareholders that have stuck with us for the past few years. From here, I'm going to hand it off to our CEO, Olivier Roussy Newton. First, I'll also introduce the rest of the panel today. Of course, Ollie, CEO, Johan Wattenstrom, the co-founder of both DeFi Technologies and Valour, our CFO, Paul Bozoki, and our Corporate Secretary, Kenny Choi. Russell Starr should also be joining us here as well, our Head of Capital Markets, and Curtis Schlaufman, VP of Marketing and Communications. Ollie, take it over.
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
Thanks. Curtis, I think we thank everyone for being here. I think it's been a transformative year for both DeFi Technologies, our subsidiaries, and the overall, I would say, regulatory framework for digital assets globally. We've read through this, right, Curtis?.
Curtis Schlaufman (VP of Marketing and Communications)
Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
Overview on DeFi Technologies. We're a publicly listed company traded on Cboe, OTC markets, and Frankfurt. We're connecting traditional capital markets with a rapidly evolving, high-growth world of decentralized finance and Web3. Through our wholly owned subsidiaries, venture portfolio, trading desk, treasury strategy, and industry partnerships, we enable traditional investors to seamlessly tap into the extensive $3 trillion sector in a regulated manner. We have about a four-year operating track record. Valour was, I think, conceived by myself and Johan in 2017 and took a few years to get regulatory approvals. Today, we have 60-plus listed exchange-traded products. For this 2024, CAD 204.3 million in 2024 adjusted net revenue. To close off the year, just before the end of the year, we finalized Neuronomics, so five businesses in total. We're very much a founder-led team.
As I mentioned, Valour was incubated by myself and Johan in 2017, and DeFi in 2020, and both of those in Malcolm aided in 2021. We have diverse business lines in the form of ETPs, trading infrastructure, research, and more. Our diversified revenue model provides broad exposure to the wave of blockchain-based assets, services, and applications. Going forward, now that we've kind of dramatically increased the strength of our balance sheet, proven our business model in the form of Valour, look to scale that across new geographies.
We've also started to make strategic and creative acquisitions that fuel the growth of our balance sheet and have all been extremely strategic. Here's a bit of an overview, graphically speaking, in terms of the different business segments within DeFi. I will start from left to right. We have Reflexivity Research that we acquired at the start of last year. Reflexivity has really been kind of a bolt-on value-added service provider to our main and largest subsidiary, wholly-owned subsidiary Valour. When we go out into the market with new exchange-traded products, we have cutting-edge research, and it also allows us to see the emerging trends in the digital asset space and effectively kind of know what products to list next and where the interest lies.
Stillman has definitely been an extremely fast-growing company, very sharp team of young entrepreneurs that have definitely carved out a niche market and a very competitive trading business segment under digital assets, but have definitely shined out. We've owned just under 6% of Amina now since 2021, and that has been kind of growing in terms of AUM capacity globally and was the first FINMA-regulated bank in Switzerland, one of the first kind of crypto banks in the world.
A fairly new business segment, which we'll touch on a bit later in more detail, is DeFi Alpha. DeFi Alpha's sole focus is identifying low-risk arbitrage opportunities within the crypto ecosystem. This past year, we did CAD 133.1 million, just under $100 million in revenue. We have a somewhat substantial venture portfolio, just over CAD 50 million, just under $40 million.
The idea and premise behind our venture portfolio, similar to Reflexivity Research, is streamlining new ETPs, new products to kind of be invested in and bring to market first within our Valour business. One thing we're very excited about is our kind of majority acquisition of Neuronomics, a leading Swiss artificial intelligence and asset management firm. Through this 52.5% acquisition of the company, we've also received a FINMA license, and we believe artificial intelligence will be ingrained systematically in all kind of facets of digital assets.
We see kind of the highest possibility in terms of that business segment in asset management. We have several joint ventures with a number of leading companies around the world. This is kind of high-level numerical facts on 2024. Adjusted book value of CAD 192. Adjusted 2024 net revenue, CAD 204 million. Earnings per share, $0.39. Market capitalization of roughly CAD 1.2 billion. Assets under management of just about a little over CAD 1 billion. Adjusted EBITDA is CAD 116. Cash and digital asset treasury on balance is CAD 81.3 million. 2024 return on equity based on adjusted income is 60%. These are some of the financial highlights of Q4 2024. We reported CAD 22.4 million in cash on hand, up from CAD 6.8 million on December 31, 2023.
As of December 31st, 2024, the company's treasury holdings included 208 Bitcoin, 121 ETH, just under 600,000 ADA, which is Cardano, 131,000 DOT, which is Polkadot blockchain, 14,000 SOL, 491 UNI, which is the Uniswap token, 433,000 AVAX, which is Avalanche Ecosystem Token, and just under 2 million Core Tokens, totaling just under CAD 60 million, CAD 58.9 million.
The company's venture portfolio investments were valued at CAD 53.7 million as of December 31st, 2024. Total value of cash, treasury, and venture portfolio stands at CAD 135 million as of our year-end. Total adjusted revenues were CAD 42.6 million for the three months ended December 31st and CAD 204.3 million for the 12 months ended December 31st as well. Adjusted net income was CAD 19.1 million for the three months ending December 31st and CAD 115 million for the 12 months ending December 31st.
Adjusted EBITDA was CAD 20.8 million for the three months ended December 31, 2024, and CAD 116.1 million for the 12 months ended December 31, 2024. On to Valour. Valour generated staking and lending income of CAD 12.8 million and management fees of CAD 2.9 million. AUM grew by 132% since December 2023 to approximately CAD 1.18 billion as of December 31. Driven by favorable mobile market conditions, obviously kind of new crypto-friendly administration in the United States and aggressive strategic corporate action. Stillman, it's not been with us for a long time. We worked kind of diligently. There were several subsidiaries that had to be amalgamated. Regulatory licenses in the digital asset space aren't always easy to kind of cross over into new entities. We finalized that acquisition a few months ago. I think it was mid-October.
They generated just under $3 million in revenue and are growing extremely fast. Once we have a few more months of Stillman on our balance sheet, we're very excited about the synergistic benefits of that business to Valour, DeFi Alpha, and other opportunities we're looking at. DeFi Alpha, a specialized arbitrage desk, as I said, we'll touch on that in a bit more detail, generated $132.1 million. We are very careful in terms of not exposing ourselves to losses in that business.
Reflexivity, very complementary to Valour in the form of enhancing our product offerings in terms of discoverable and actionable research that people can review before selecting which exchange-traded products they would like to purchase, had just under $1 million in revenues for the three months ended December 31st, and $2 million for the 12 months ended December 31st, 2024. Here is our kind of AUM in net sales in USD. As you can see, we've kind of had a very robust increase into 2024 as digital asset prices climbed. Johan, did you want to touch on any specific kind of data indicators pertaining to this slide?
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
No. I think the most important bit here is actually we launched 20 new products in November. As you can see, a larger portion of the AUM has actually gone into under the largest assets and the ones we had before. I think it's around 20% now. It's in mostly these 20 new smaller coins, which improved our product mix quite a bit. We've seen healthy inflow across the last four months or last eight months and going on into the start of this year as well.
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
Yeah. I think to touch on that, as Johan mentioned, we've been bringing smaller, I would say smaller or newer coins to market that are definitely a lot more popular than, say, what people might refer to as the blue chip digital assets. People want exposure to volatility and growth. We will continue to provide the largest and most diverse range of exchange-traded products to our clients across incoming geographies.
Curtis Schlaufman (VP of Marketing and Communications)
I think another point to add that's really important here is that we haven't had a net outflow month in probably a little over two years. In fact, last month in February, when you had billions of dollars in outflows in all the ETFs globally, Valour still saw total inflows over $11 million into our ETPs. These products are very sticky. We continually see net inflows month over month and hope to see that trend continue.
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
Yeah. Definitely a good point, Curtis. It's nice to have a demographic of clientele that are risk-on.
Curtis Schlaufman (VP of Marketing and Communications)
Yeah.
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
Obviously, we're confined by some of the things that we can share, but this has been an ongoing process since 2021 with specifically the SEC. Just to recap things, mid-September, the company filed a 40-F registration statement with the United States Securities Commission in connection with its application to list its common shares on the NASDAQ stock market. On January 17, 2025, the company filed an amended 40-F registration statement with the SEC. The listing of the company's common shares on the NASDAQ remains subject to the approval of the NASDAQ and the satisfaction of all applicable listing and regulatory requirements, including Form 40-F being declared effective by the SEC. The NASDAQ continues to progress its application to list its common shares on the NASDAQ. Obviously, there's lots of benefits to being listed on a major US exchange.
Most people know visibility, access to institutional retail investors, and help DeFi make a name for itself, which I think is still kind of largely unnoticed in terms of our profitability and uniqueness of our business model. Yeah. Obviously, as we get material information, we're press releasing it right away in terms of this. I think it was kind of a jump ball with the election going into the end of the year. Once we had kind of a pro-crypto presence, the game has definitely changed in terms of what we're seeing and the optimism across the border from Canada in terms of stateside regulatory stuff. I'm not sure if Paul, you want to comment on anything or Russ?
Paul Bozoki (CFO)
Yeah. I was just going to say one interesting anecdote for everyone is that not that we're Galaxy or, I mean, I guess in a way, we're similar to Galaxy in some aspects. Mike Novogratz was on, I believe it was CNBC, saying that he believed that the SEC was just waiting for annuals to be filed. Once the annuals were filed and, of course, met whatever the new hurdles or restrictions were that the SEC is putting up, which are completely different today, I believe they're not considering any of these tokens as equities anymore. They would then see, or the SEC would then see, uplifts on a far more regular basis. That was out of Galaxy, not out of us, but just gives you a little bit of context.
Russell Starr (Head of Capital Markets)
From my desk to add, we have a PCAOB-compliant auditor. We filed our annuals, so there's nothing holding us back from the financial and reporting point of view. We would be listed in the United States on NASDAQ as what's called a foreign private issuer. It's really just getting effective with the SEC, which management here hopes is Q2 and hopefully sooner, earlier in Q2 than much later in Q2.
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
Probably one of our biggest endeavors across the company has been our strategic and global expansion. We have 60 ETPs as of now, targeting 100 plus by year-end, some of which include leveraged and warrant products. We have been the first mover in a lot of these markets such as Africa, Asia, Middle East, which has its benefits, but also has a process to educate local regulators, exchanges, legal firms in terms of what digital asset offerings mean through a stock exchange and how to keep them secure. Some of our strategic partnerships that we have announced is our MOU with the Nairobi Stock Exchange to list our ETPs in Kenya and one in Singapore with a new exchange that is backed by SBI Holdings and SIX, which is the Swiss stock exchange called Asian Next.
We should be seeing they're moving at a very, both moving at a very fast pace. Yeah, we're using kind of some of these markets as a blueprint to then further aggressively expand Singapore into other Asian markets, Kenya into other African markets. We have put in place eligibility letters in the Middle East in both the DFM, the Dubai Financial Markets, and with the Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange. Asset management outlook for 2025, I think we, being in a highly volatile macro environment, definitely tread on the side of optimistic, but also definitely want to be conservative as I think the world embraces kind of a new, I don't want to say kind of new world order, but a world order where assets and volatility kind of change and fluctuate on a daily basis.
That'll take a little bit of time to kind of smooth things out. Just some quick kind of factoids and highlights. AUM growth is up 900% since market lows in 2022. We already covered kind of some of these specific numbers, growth driven by favorable market conditions, new ETP launches. We will continue to do. We're always, from a technical perspective, working on increasing, optimizing, staking the lending fees, making and automating our trading desks to make those more cash flow generating, less human error. We gave a conservative guidance of CAD 227 million, $159 million . Johan, I'm not sure if you wanted to kind of touch on kind of how we systematically came up with these numbers at all.
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
I think they're mainly derived from the momentum and the trends we see right now, but also, obviously, we have been, as you said, quite conservative in our assumptions. I think we are quite optimistic about the markets for the full year, but in these assumptions, we kind of assume the same levels of the market as we see right now, where the core business driven by the AUM monetization will be at a much higher level than last year. We have chosen to be quite conservative on the DeFi Alpha side. We have quite an aggressive growth of our pipeline of deals, but it's very hard to pin down exactly when they go through. We anticipate a strong next quarter within that business.
It is harder to know exactly how many deals we will do at what month, but these are the different trends we have been taking into this. We are trying to be quite conservative as the market at the moment. We do not want to make any optimistic assumptions about the market for the full year, even though obviously we are very bullish on the crypto market as such ahead of the next few quarters. We have not actually taken those into those assumptions and projections for the year.
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
Yeah. Just to visually kind of put in place the geographic expansion, we started new products as United Kingdom's FCA regulators opened up the products specifically just for Bitcoin and Ethereum. We're still working with regulators on innovative Bitcoin products and going back and forth. Again, a lot of regulatory education required, but I think once we can get some of these landmark innovative projects, it's fairly quick to mirror them into new markets. We've announced a joint venture in the US with Anthony Pompliano's PCM. Canada, where we are still assessing the right joint venture partners. Africa, we've signed an MOU with the Nairobi Stock Exchange in Kenya. Africa, I think, is a very interesting market.
Also, with treasury-related introductions and basically kind of starting with United States stockpiling cryptocurrencies for their kind of governments and/or sovereign wealth funds, African nations and others around the world will be quick to do so and would feel definitely more secure doing so through regulated stock exchanges that their countries control. UAE, as I mentioned, two eligibility letters have been submitted in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. We are progressing quickly there. We are also exploring four or five other Middle Eastern countries that are definitely progressive and opening up to digital assets. Again, I think similar to Africa and UAE and Singapore for that instance, once you are able to kind of list and provide a benchmark for products working logistically in a compliant manner, then it is kind of a domino effect within those regions.
This is kind of a slide that just kind of goes over the type of digital assets that we're thinking of. Obviously, the world's changing very rapidly. We've developed a very large clientele of people who definitely want exposure to new innovative asset classes. We have a whole range of topics that will convert into productization for our end users. Obviously, digital assets is very interesting, but digital assets can also be mixed with various other commodities. We will see a lot of innovation happening with our recent acquisition of Neuronomics, applying AI, not just to digital assets, but also equities. Johan, not sure if I missed anything here. You wanted to touch on anything in more detail?
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
Yeah. I think the main point here is that obviously, after the success we had with the new assets listed in the end of Q4 and digital assets, we continue to roll out a lot of new ETPs on the digital asset side for sure to build on that success and that momentum.
What we're going to add to that now, hopefully for the first half year here, is the active strategies, actively managed certificates, and so on on more different types of strategies, Alpha type strategies, including Neuronomics strategies in this realm, and not only have the passive type of ETPs. We also, besides working to expanding the online assets universe, work pushing quite hard on broadening the scope of investment vehicles for this purpose. Right now, it's only ETPs, ETN, but also warrants, as mentioned, funds, asset-backed tokens, and so on.
It's all in the works. Yeah, we're building on the infrastructure for those vehicles to reach a broader audience, for a broader audience of investors. As we also mentioned here, besides the one-on-one trackers, we see a lot of also structured products and other types of bells and whistles on these ETPs, ETNs that we see a big demand for, which we hope to roll out now in Q2, Q3, hopefully very soon. Yeah.
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
Here is our asset outlook or digital outlook, corporate outlook for Stillman in 2025. As I mentioned prior in the call, it took several months to get the regulatory licenses over from their various subsidiaries into an amalgamated structure. We are forecasting $12 million-$16 million for 2025. Again, always treading on the conservative side, driven by trade volume growth and new business initiatives. Q1 2025 forecast is $2.8 million-$3 million in revenue with significant growth potentials as synergies with DeFi Technologies and more materialized. Focus in 2025 will be business development, expanding the team to accelerate institutional client acquisition, focusing on Latin America and Europe. Product and market expansion, enhancing FX and stablecoin services to diversify revenue and hedge against altcoin volatility.
Again, this stablecoin real-world asset market segment is booming, and we definitely have some inroads to have a seat at the table with Stillman's potentially new product offerings in that regard. Strategic partnerships, expanding global banking relationships. We announced kind of partnering with one of the largest banks, Liechtenstein, Bank Frick, some months ago, and Fireblocks to broaden client access and streamline fiat transactions. Team growth, brand evolution, post-acquisition integration. We're still working on fine-tuning technology and trading technology across all of our subsidiaries. We are very excited about the potential growth of Stillman. It runs like us, very lean and mean. Back in the fall, you'll see kind of more and more new products being launched and just general growth in terms of being a great business amidst market volatility. Johan, do you want to take this one?
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. In general, for the Alpha, DeFi Alpha, sorry, the main points here, I would say, is we have two parts of it. One is the larger deals where we built a significant pipeline with deals that we have high conviction that will happen within Q2, Q3, especially two larger deals in Q2 that we have more or less signed. Those, as I say, if we go further out in the timeline here, it is hard to pin down exactly what month they will occur in. We projected this will still be a huge part of the revenue for the year.
The other part here, which is more consistent on a daily basis, is the more models-driven type of arbitrage strategies, which are kind of integrated with our daily flow management and also the management of our balance sheet in terms of monetization of our full balance sheet, including liquidity, digital assets, and so forth, which gives us quite a unique position to take advantage of a lot of both arbitrage and other types of model-driven strategies. We built out and continue to build out the infrastructure and models quite a lot in this area. That is one part of it that we see strong growth in. The other part is obviously that we're focusing a lot on growing the exposure to and the pipeline of deals similar to what we were able to do last year.
We are really optimistic about the full year and also next quarter in these terms. Yeah, we believe this will still be probably half of the revenues going forward for the next year at least and growing long term. Also, I would say these type of trades are more uncorrelated to the core business cash flow we see from the optimization of the monetization of our AUM and the rest of our assets on the balance sheet. Those are easier to project, but we see that both parts will have a huge impact here continually during the year. We have been quite conservative in our estimates for the full year here as there might be some volatility in part of this in terms of deal flow. Yeah, we are super optimistic on this part for sure.
Russell Starr (Head of Capital Markets)
I just want to emphasize there are two parts to DeFi Alpha. It is the larger trades that we have seen, but also we have the daily systematic arbitrage through our daily flows that we see through our products.
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
Yeah, for sure. Both for the daily flow and also for the monetization of our liquidity and the balance sheet. That is one silo here. The other silo is the kind of series of one of the deals that we see continuously while we're building our relationships with our counterparts and support school, yeah, which we started last year.
We see a lot of super interesting large deals coming through this year as well. Some of them have taken more time than we thought. We actually thought we would finalize one or two of these in Q4 last year, but they took a few more months. I think some of the counterparts waited a little bit because of the dip in the market we saw. Yeah, we have a high conviction that those will happen now in the near future.
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
Yeah, I think we, and just to touch again on DeFi Alpha, I think it definitely took a good two and a half years for us to be able to accurately forecast with data endpoints the lowers revenue in conjunction with the ratio to AUM. I know everyone is very eager to see specific breakdowns of DeFi Alpha's outlook and projections. As the market kind of changes, which is what Johan alluded to, we're going through kind of new cyclical trends in volatility. With that comes trading opportunities, but also risk-off opportunities, which kind of delay some of our core strategies. Hopefully, we're not even a year into having operated DeFi Alpha. I think give us a few more quarters, and then we'll be able to specifically really have those specific breakdowns.
I think given kind of global uncertainty, we'll always tread with caution and provide conservative outlooks on all these numbers. To touch on Neuronomics, really kind of rocket science PhD team that's been working in artificial intelligence for a better part of a decade, if not longer. We acquired just over 50% on March 7, 2025. Our strategic growth initiatives, expanded model-driven AMC program. We're partnering with Lord Broughton, an actively managed certificate suite, leveraging proprietary AI for strategy development, proven through their AI platform, NeuroFin. Market diversification, extending expertise into new asset classes. Q3 2025, launch AI-powered rebalancing strategy for the tech sector. There's a large pipeline in place. Smart crypto AI, Q3 2025, high portfolio product that gives you high risk-adjusted returns across cryptocurrencies. Crypto Alpha AI captures Alpha in the digital asset space.
We'll be rolling out an equity solution, which we're very bullish on, targeting inefficiencies in the technology stocks. With this, there's so many new fund managers and institutional capital entering the space. I just think that every institutional and/or fund manager is going to have to have a breakdown of their portfolio and digital assets managed by artificial intelligence as we see enormous leaps and bounds every day, essentially, towards AGI. In the kind of majority acquisition of Neuronomics, it gives us compliance and tech edge.
We get a FINMA license, which allows us to distribute products in Switzerland, where there's a huge number of family offices, institutional capital, large banks looking for products of this nature. We have scalable infrastructure to go along with that.We're very excited about being able to launch AI-infused digital asset projects and then also get into equity products. Johan, I'm not sure if I missed anything on this.
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
No, I think that that captures some interesting points here. I think, as you said, they have a very long track record of research and have been running active strategies in the crypto markets driven by different forms of AI. We are also looking forward to applying this technology across some other parts of the group as well.
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
Yeah, and here's just a bit more of visuals on just their AI strategies that are performing general crypto indexes. I think all of this is available on our website as well. Two pure play exposures to Solana and Bitcoin finance. We've been pushing forward on and obviously partners with the team at Core. Really love what they're doing in terms of inventing non-custodial staking and dual staking for Bitcoin.
They definitely have the highest committed amount of Bitcoin to any kind of chain of this nature. We'll be pushing forward aggressively. With kind of all of the changes in the U.S. administration, we're definitely working with legal counsel to figure out and facilitate the most and quickest streamlined approaches to market for both of these companies, which, as we announced, will be distributed to DeFi shareholders. Very excited about this.
Obviously, on the SolFi side, we have one of the largest Solana funds globally, in-house Solana team. We acquired Solana technology proprietary algorithms that maximize the yield when it comes to this. We will definitely be, as things become material, press releasing them. I think just in light of the new administration changes with the SEC, we have definitely been figuring out and optimizing trajectory for the capital markets for both of these initiatives going forward.
Russell Starr (Head of Capital Markets)
Great. Now we can move to questions for the last half of the call. You can type your questions into the chat if they already have been answered, and I'll just cycle through them. Let me pull up the Q&A. We'll start with Michael Kim.
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
I've answered a bunch of them just while we've been on the call just to make sure we could get through them.
Russell Starr (Head of Capital Markets)
Awesome.
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
Thanks, Russ.
Russell Starr (Head of Capital Markets)
We'll start with Michael Kim, an analyst from Zacks. In terms of the analyzed revenue projection of CAD 227 million for 2025, excuse me, is that based on AUM as of December 31, 2024? And Johan, yeah, go ahead.
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
Yeah, I think the breakdown, there's a few inputs in that where we derived that from, but we have actually assumed the same levels of the crypto market as we have right now. We have built in a trajectory for the AUM we think we'll get from our new launches in terms of products, which is based on the kind of inflow we've seen in prior launches, both now in Q4 last year, but also prior to that, and the new geographies that we will get during the year. Mainly, the main parts there is the growth in our algo strategies, the new product launches, new geographies in terms of the AUM growth.
The AUM growth that we have kind of based the monetization numbers on do not assume a higher market, but it's based on the launches and the development of the business in terms of new products and so forth.
Russell Starr (Head of Capital Markets)
Great. Thanks, Johan. Question from Hal, analyst at B. Riley. What is the best estimate for launches of ETPs in Asia, Middle East, and Africa given the regulatory commentary in the call today?
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
Yeah, I can take this. We are definitely, I think, in the final strides with the Singaporean exchange Asian Next. I think we'll be coming to market with very innovative, first-of-its-kind product offerings, specifically and primarily to target the money market funds that trade in Singapore. I would be comfortable with kind of a 30-day time horizon in terms of Singapore. We are really in kind of final steps with both Middle East and Africa. It is really up to the regulators, similar with the SEC, to give them the green light. I think we have some people who drive a lot of influence in these markets. We are pushing as far as we can on a daily base in regards to that.
Russell Starr (Head of Capital Markets)
Another question. Can you speak to the custody risk of the assets tokens, several security issues, how you custody, and is that risk borne by the unit holders as well?.
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
Yeah, I can comment on that. Obviously, we have a short list of custodians we use, including Copper, including Anchorage Bank, including BitGo, and a few of these most known names. I would say we have a really low risk in this regard. We have been custodying crypto assets for 10 plus years of this size. We have a really, our process has developed these 10 years. It takes a long time for us to actually onboard or allow a new custody solution into what we do. I would say we feel super comfortable with our process for onboarding new custody solutions. We do not do that often, but we have a very short list of custody counterparties we work with, third-party counterparties we work with. I do not know if someone else wanted to chime in there, but.
Russell Starr (Head of Capital Markets)
Yeah, Johan, maybe comment about the fact that we also have several validators of our own, which as a result, with our Solana validator, with our Core validator, we actually are not lending out basically any of those products because they actually sit in our own validator.
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously, one part of this could be counterparty risk. We basically do not lend tokens at the moment. We keep coins with our custodians, and we do staking from those custody accounts. That is with our own validators, I would say almost with all the underlying. We have a tech team on board that has been both developing custody solutions for a very long time in this space and also are part of the process for allowing new custody solutions, third-party counterparties to come on. We run the validators obviously within our staking technology team.
We have that in-house, which also have obviously improved quite drastically our monetization rate during last year. Prior to that, we were using also third-party validators. Custody remains super conservative, but we have from that delegated to our own validators now.
Russell Starr (Head of Capital Markets)
Yeah. I have invited analysts at Northland Capital, Mike Grondahl, to ask a few questions. Mike, go ahead.
Mike Grondahl (Analyst)
Hey, guys, thanks a lot. Can you hear me?
Russell Starr (Head of Capital Markets)
Yep.
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
Yeah, we hear you. Thanks.
Mike Grondahl (Analyst)
Hey, I think you covered the three new geographies pretty well in the Q&A section, but are there any new ETFs or ETPs planned for Europe and the U.K. in 2025?
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
Yeah, for sure. As I said, we're aiming for, we are 60-65, I think, products right now. We're aiming for 100 for the year. Within the next few weeks, we will launch another batch of products in Europe. Also, in terms of London Stock Exchange, it's up to the regulator. I believe only Bitcoin and Ethereum are actually allowed in the U.K. as of now. For the rest of Europe, for sure, we're going to aggressively go out with a lot more underlying products and more versions of those and types of vehicles as well. You will see more large batches of new products coming out during Q2 and Q3.
Mike Grondahl (Analyst)
so we should understand the 100 ETPs. That's a goal for Europe and the U.K. That's what that really is.
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
Yes, yes [Crosstalk].
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
The U.K. only allows for Bitcoin and Ethereum ETPs right now. That's it.
Mike Grondahl (Analyst)
Ok.
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
I think there was a question that potentially touches on this, which is why we kind of work with smaller exchanges. For instance, Spotlight in Sweden is because they're more in tune with digital assets, where things are going, and allows us flexibility to list new products. We can't list more than two products in the U.K. as of now. We're working on something innovative that I can't really talk about, but we're trying to push the boundaries everywhere and anywhere, right? With some of these more, there's definitely the Middle East, Asia, they're embracing crypto. Once they see all of these 100 plus products on a recognized Euroclear regulated stock exchange, our goal is then to passport all of them subsequently into these new jurisdictions.
Mike Grondahl (Analyst)
Got it. Then embedded in your CAD 227 million revenue guidance, DeFi Alpha, it sounded like from Johan's comment, that could be roughly half of revenue in 2025. Did I hear that right? I'm trying to understand what's embedded in the CAD 227 million for DeFi Alpha.
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
For in total for the company, I think we have the monetization rate from the AUM at present levels is around $90 million-$100 million, I believe, for the year projected. And that's the monetization of our AUM based on the trajectory we have a hard conviction in for rolling out these products. There's no kind of nothing stopping us with the exchanges we work on to actually do this.
Yeah, it's both. I think part of this will be from new products. Some of these products will be smaller market cap digital assets for sure, but also it will improve our product mix. We have a higher monetization rate in terms of lending, staking, and flow revenue from these smaller assets. It is both come from new assets we put out there, the continued growth as a percentage of the total of the smaller higher yielding products. Yeah, that is basically it.
Mike Grondahl (Analyst)
Got it. And then just two quick questions. We're sitting here at March 31. Can you comment on the March quarter? Is it appropriate to take, I don't know, a fourth of the $227 million and say the March quarter is at least a fourth of that or close to a fourth of that? And then secondly, so far year to date, was there any large DeFi Alpha trades?
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
What we can say here is that we have had a very strong Q1 here from our core business, for sure. I think it's actually going to be better than Q4 because of the average asset under management, the higher monetization rate, and so forth that we will have. Only one-off deals. We have a few that we believe will come through next three weeks.
We thought they would be in Q1. I don't think you will see those in Q1, but you will see a bigger chunk of that in Q2. There will be less revenue derived from these, but I think we can probably go out like we did last year and communicate that when these larger significant deals go through. Q1 is definitely strong from the whole core business, the arbitrage strategies, and so forth. We have seen a good quarter so far.
In terms of the one-off big deals, you will see more of those in Q2 and going forward. We obviously know much more about Q2 than Q3. For sure, Q2 will be a good quarter on that side.
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
Also, Mike, one thing to add to that, and everyone here on the team will agree. The DLOM, which really is just a mark-to-market pain in our uniwet, as those dates occur where portions of those investments fall off, and there was a very big waterfall event on March 31, not only does the DLOM percentage go down as time goes on, but also a lot of those long positions, which are being arbitrarily marked down by the auditor despite the fact we're fully hedged, those will come off. March will also see, if Paul correct me, I think it happened on March 31, so it will be part of Q1. Is that correct?
Paul Bozoki (CFO)
Just for everybody, we do have we're in two funds. One of the funds gives us back 25% of our capital effective March 31, but we won't get the money till June. It's a distribution. The slight nuance to what Russ said for everybody is the DLOM is linked to the timing of the coin. Coins out in 2028 have a DLOM as high as 42%. The 25% I had at the end of December is on the basket of the entire portfolio. The coins in March do not have that much of a DLOM on it. We will not see a big gain pickup, particularly linked to that, but we are commercially getting our capital back if everybody can follow that. It's time value of money. Coins several years out have a bigger DLOM.
On a portfolio basis, we're at 25 at December, and it will come down. Unfortunately, the March 31 trigger of one of the funds distributing back 25% will not give us a big DLOM gain because those coins did not have a big DLOM on them. Just for everybody, I know it is confusing, but the takeaway is it is non-cash.
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
It's mark-to-market. Yeah, it's mark-to-market.
Paul Bozoki (CFO)
It's mark-to-market. It turns around, and it will reverse to zero by 2028 and grind steadily down.
Mike Grondahl (Analyst)
Got it. Guys, best of luck in 2025. Thank you.
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
Thanks, Mike.
Russell Starr (Head of Capital Markets)
Thanks, Mike. A question from Alan Klee. I think this will be the last one, we've run a little bit over. What are the factors behind the higher monetization for Valour? I think, Johan, if you could explain just how the business model for Valour works in a little more detail.
Johan Wattenstrom (Co-Founder)
Yeah, for sure. There are several factors. If you compare it to last year, obviously, last year, we paid off all the debts. The debt held a lot of collateral. That collateral is free and can be monetized now. That is one part of it, which we already touched upon before. Another part is that we actually now run a much higher percentage of our assets under our own validators, also with MEV code and so on on it. We can monetize it to a much higher degree than prior when we actually outsourced a lot of the staking. That is one part of it. The other part is obviously the work we have done with monetization of this flow and the arbitrage of our liquidity.
That's something also that's maybe a little bit outside of this, but that's one where we have become much more efficient and have more intelligent algos for that purpose. It's basically there's a few factors. We have a much we can lend to much higher rates because of our network nowadays and only do that opportunistically when we see really, really good deals. On the staking side, we run our proprietary technology right now, which had in some cases actually doubled our monetization rate. Another factor is that we have signed more and more seed agreements with lock-ins with some of these smaller coins with a quite high staking reward that was not part of the product mix earlier. Also, obviously, the higher part of the AUM, there are these smaller high-yielding coins that's also driving the monetization rate.
Russell Starr (Head of Capital Markets)
Great. Thanks, Johan. We're going to wrap it up here. I think high level, obviously very spectacular 2024. If we're going into 2024, I doubt the market figured that we would produce these results that we have today. We kind of took the street by surprise. I think we have some surprises up our sleeve, as we've alluded to, for 2025 as well. Thank you to all of you who have joined the call. Thank you for all the questions.
If we were not able to answer your call or answer your question during this call, please do reach out to [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected], and we will be happy to answer via email or even take your call. This recording will be made available as soon as I get it up on Twitter. You can view the presentation that we had today via the link on the press release that we put out this morning. With that, enjoy the rest of your Monday and have a great week. Thanks, everyone.
Olivier Roussy Newton (CEO)
Thanks, everyone.
Paul Bozoki (CFO)
Thanks.