Ex-Morgan Stanley VP raises $3.5 million pre-seed for algorithmic crypto trading platform Tread.fi

Tread.fi, an algorithmic crypto trading platform founded by a former Morgan Stanley employee, has raised $3.5 million in a pre-seed funding round.

New Form Capital led the round, with Aquanow, Varys Capital, GBV Capital, Thanefield Capital and others participating, Tread.fi said Wednesday. The round was structured as rolling simple agreements for future equity (SAFEs) with a token side letter, setting the stage for a subsequent round in Q1 2025, David Jeong, founder and CEO of Tread.fi and a former vice president of quantitative research at Morgan Stanley, told The Block.

Jeong said the round closed in the first quarter of this year, declining to comment on the valuation.

What is Tread.fi?

Tread.fi is a crypto trading infrastructure startup focused on serving institutional firms. It provides clients with a trading engine, advanced algorithms and direct market access for spot, futures and options.

“Our goal is to offer the best algorithmic trading/execution platform that leverages the strengths of blockchain technology,” Jeong said.

Talos, CoinRoutes, and Elwood Technologies can be seen as direct competitors of Tread.fi, Jeong noted. As a differentiating factor, Jeong said Tread.fi allows its clients to host the trading engine on their own servers for complete trading privacy and charges a low, fixed annual licensing fee instead of a traditional volume-based commission model, where costs rise alongside trading activity.

“We offer a fully private trading engine,” Jeong said. “Secrecy of trading strategies/alphas is the core business model for hedge funds, so we aligned ourselves with our clients by offering a trading engine that removed all centralized access and could run privately.”

Jeong declined to share the names of Tread.fi’s clients but mentioned they are buy-side hedge funds, market-making/over-the-counter trading desks, brokers and other trading service providers looking for institutional algorithmic direct market access functionality.

With fresh capital in hand, Tread.fi plans to continue enhancing its trading platform and expanding its team. There are currently eight people working for Tread.fi in Bangkok and New York, and Jeong plans to hire more people in engineering, sales and business development functions.

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