Seed CX

About Seed CX

Seed CX was established in 2015 by Edward Woodford and Brian Liston, who met as graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The venture, born from a school project, initially aimed to create a trading platform for emerging commodities like industrial hemp. Woodford, a UK-native, and Liston, from Ireland, chose Chicago as their base due to its rich history in commodities trading and its deep talent pool in finance and technology.

The company initially launched as an institutional-focused digital asset exchange, providing trading and settlement services for spot digital assets with plans for CFTC-regulated derivatives. It catered to professional trading firms and institutional investors, offering robust market safeguards and technology infrastructure. However, the exchange struggled to gain significant market share and trading volume compared to larger competitors. This led to a strategic pivot in June 2020, when Seed CX shut down its exchange to concentrate on its highly successful settlement arm, Zero Hash. By that time, Zero Hash accounted for over 95% of the company's revenue. Following this shift, Seed CX officially rebranded to Zero Hash.

As Zero Hash, the company provides a turnkey infrastructure solution for digital assets, functioning as a settlement-as-a-service business. Its core offering is a post-trade settlement utility that handles the complexities of transferring purchased assets to a buyer's account and cash to a seller's account. Through its API, clients such as fintech platforms, broker-dealers, payment providers, and exchanges can integrate digital asset trading, custody, and settlement services natively into their own customer experiences without taking on the regulatory overhead. The platform handles all back-office functions for various transactions, including spot, derivatives, and loans. The business model is comparable to "Banking as a Service" (BaaS), providing the regulated rails for digital asset transactions. Zero Hash holds numerous licenses, including being a FinCEN-regulated Money Service Business and a Money Transmitter in many states.