For James Harris, the newly appointed Group CEO of Tesseract, taking the helm of the Helsinki-based digital asset lender is both a culmination of years of leadership in financial technology and the beginning of a bold new chapter.
Stepping into the CEO Role
“Joining Tesseract was both a natural progression and a step up,” Harris reflects. “At CoinDesk Data and Zodia Custody, I helped shape strategy and led commercial growth, but I wasn’t the final decision-maker. Having run smaller businesses in the past, I knew I was ready for the challenge of stepping into the CEO role and taking full accountability.”
That accountability now extends across Tesseract’s $500m in assets under management and over $1bn in originated loans. Harris inherits a company with solid foundations, a reputation for reliable yield services, a team with deep institutional experience, and strong partnerships, including with Bitstamp (now part of Robinhood). Yet, as he sees it, the company remains underappreciated in a crowded marketplace.
“Tesseract has a product that works, a talented team, and a track record,” he says. “But it hasn’t yet achieved the scale or visibility it deserves. Helping it fulfils that potential and become a category-defining company in crypto yield is exactly the kind of challenge that energises me at this point in my career.”
Yield as Infrastructure
At the heart of Harris’s vision is a deceptively simple ambition: make earning yield on digital assets as safe, seamless, and predictable as holding a government bond.
“Whether you’re an exchange offering Earn products to your users, or a corporate treasury looking to deploy assets responsibly, you should be able to plug into Tesseract and access curated, institutional-grade yield strategies without needing to navigate DeFi, counterparties, custody, or regulation yourself,” Harris explains.
This philosophy, what he calls “Yield as Infrastructure” underpins Tesseract’s model. The company provides a modular, API-driven platform that connects client capital to carefully managed opportunities across CeFi and DeFi. The risk, regulatory, and operational burdens are absorbed by Tesseract, freeing partners to focus on growth.
“Our edge lies in that full-stack approach,” Harris says. “Most firms either focus on custody, trading, or asset management. We sit across all three, which gives us a better vantage point on risk and access. And importantly, we’re in the process of obtaining European regulatory authorisation, including specific permissions to deploy assets into DeFi something most competitors simply can’t do.”
Scaling Ambitions
With a foundation in place, Harris is already looking two to three years ahead. “We can significantly grow AUM by expanding distribution and broadening our product shelf,” he says. Planned innovations include risk-banded yield strategies, tokenised vaults, and hybrid yield-powered asset management products tailored for fintech’s, family offices, and institutions.
The company is also positioning itself as a bridge for traditional financial institutions tentatively entering the digital asset world. “There’s a huge opportunity in helping large TradFi firms dip their toes into on-chain yield in a way that’s measurable and compliant,” Harris notes. “We want to make crypto yield predictable, trusted and maybe even a little bit boring.”
The timing appears right. Institutional adoption of digital assets is gathering momentum, driven by three converging forces: clearer regulation, macroeconomic pressure, and improved infrastructure.
“In the US, initiatives like the GENIUS and CLARITY Acts are landmark moments. In Europe, MiCA is now live. That level of clarity would have been aspirational just two years ago,” Harris argues. “When firms like BlackRock are tokenising treasuries and building on public blockchains, it’s a strong signal the tide has turned.”
Meanwhile, with rate cuts looming and real yields under pressure, institutional investors are looking elsewhere for returns. Crypto-native strategies offering 5–15% through staking or protocol-based lending are increasingly difficult to ignore.
“Many still assume crypto yield is either too risky or unregulated,” Harris admits. “That’s a misconception. There’s a big difference between chasing unsustainable APYs and allocating to risk-managed, on-chain strategies run by professionals with controls and accountability. The gap in understanding is narrowing, but we need to keep building trust.”
To that end, Tesseract has embedded compliance, credit, and liquidity oversight into every layer of its stack. Its modular infrastructure is designed to integrate seamlessly into institutional workflows, with APIs, segregated wallets, and granular reporting.
Regulation as Competitive Advantage
If trust is the end goal, regulation is the foundation. For Harris, Europe’s MiCA framework is both a challenge and an opportunity.
“Regulation is the defining lens for any serious crypto business,” he says. “MiCA raised the bar, but it also gave institutions the clarity they’ve been waiting for. We’ve shaped our strategy around operating in this arena and expect to be fully MiCA-compliant ahead of year-end.”
This requires heavy investment in compliance infrastructure and audit-ready processes, but Harris sees the payoff as significant. “Smaller players may struggle with the cost and complexity. For us, compliance becomes a competitive advantage, it attracts capital and legitimises what we do.”
A particular area of focus is stablecoins, which power around 70% of DeFi yield flows. “Stablecoins are central to our strategy,” Harris explains. “We treat them like any other yield-bearing instrument: analysing issuer risk, regulatory status, reserves, and redemption mechanics. Algorithmic stablecoins we mostly avoid; fiat-backed types like USDC remain the core.”
MiCA will tighten rules around stablecoins, including capping their circulation in some cases, but Harris views this as positive. “Our B2B clients want yield, but they need confidence. By combining stablecoin yields with real-world assets, staking, and protocol lending, we can offer diversified, risk-adjusted solutions.”
The Future of DeFi and Yield
Looking further ahead, Harris believes the most enduring innovations in decentralised finance will centre around real-world integration and institutional adoption.
“Three developments stand out,” he says. “First, real-world asset tokenisation—on-chain treasuries, bonds, and money market funds will unlock over $1tn in flows by 2030. Second, cross-chain yield infrastructure like EigenLayer reduces fragmentation and expands opportunity. Third, compliant hybrids that blend DeFi yield with institutional-grade wrappers will dominate.”
Harris is confident that DeFi and traditional finance are on a path of convergence. “TradFi is adopting blockchain for efficiency, while DeFi is adapting to regulatory and institutional requirements. In five years, yield products will likely look like hybrids: tokenised treasuries earning DeFi-based yield, wrapped in compliant structures and integrated directly into banks and fintechs.”
Will the future be decentralised or institution-led? Harris sees a pragmatic outcome. “In terms of scale, institutions will dominate they have the capital, compliance engines, and distribution. But the energy and innovation still comes from the edges. Our job is to capture the best of both worlds and deliver compliant, risk-adjusted returns.”
Building for the Next 12 Months
For all the talk of 2030, Harris is keenly focused on the next year. Milestones ahead include:
- Full MiCA readiness across Europe
- New yield products blending CeFi, DeFi, and real-world assets
- Upgraded partner infrastructure, with faster onboarding and improved APIs
- A refreshed brand and stronger market presence
- Strategic hires in finance, product, and technology
“We’re not trying to do everything,” Harris stresses. “We’re focused on a few critical things we can do exceptionally well, and by doing so, build a durable platform for long-term growth.”
As for the biggest misconception he’d like to put to rest. “That digital asset yields are inherently reckless,” he says firmly. “The reality is they can be responsibly managed, risk-adjusted, and institutionally scalable. That’s the future we’re building at Tesseract.”
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