Spiko raises $90m in Series B backed by Index Ventures and Speedinvest

We have spent the last decade arguing about what money should look like on a blockchain. For the longest time, the answer was basically a digital version of the dollar under a mattress. You held it, it stayed the same, and if you wanted to do anything with it, you had to move it into a risky protocol or a centralized lending desk that eventually blew up. Those days are ending.

Spiko just closed a $90 million Series B, led by heavyweights like Index Ventures and Speedinvest. This isn't just another fundraising headline to scroll past. It is a signal that the infrastructure for yield-bearing assets is moving from the experimental fringe into the core of how we move value. If you are building in the space, you need to understand why this matters more than the latest meme coin cycle.

The End of the Idle Stablecoin

For years, the industry standard was the non-interest-bearing stablecoin. Companies like Tether and Circle built massive empires by holding user funds in Treasuries and keeping the interest for themselves. It was a great business model for them, but a raw deal for everyone else. Builders had to choose between the safety of these giants or the high-risk, high-reward chaos of decentralized finance.

Spiko is part of a new guard that is flipping this dynamic. By tokenizing real-world assets like short-term government debt and piping that yield directly to the holder, they are turning every wallet into a high-yield savings account. For a founder, this changes the math of your treasury management and your product design. You are no longer just building a place for people to store value; you are building an entry point into global capital markets.

Why Index and Speedinvest are Betting Big

The venture capital world is notoriously flighty, but a $90 million round in this environment is a statement of conviction. The lead investors aren't chasing a trend; they are betting on a structural change in the financial stack. The reality is that the gap between traditional finance and crypto is closing. Institutional players don't want to hold USDC just for the sake of it; they want the efficiency of a blockchain with the returns of a Treasury bill.

Spiko has focused on the regulatory and compliance hurdles that usually kill startups in this sector. By securing the necessary licenses and building a transparent bridge to traditional debt instruments, they have made themselves a safe harbor for institutional capital. This isn't just about "crypto-native" users anymore. This is about the trillions of dollars sitting in money market funds looking for a more efficient rail.

What This Means for Builders

If you are developing a fintech app or a DeFi protocol, you have to ask yourself why your users would ever hold a standard stablecoin again. If they can get 4% or 5% yield just by holding a Spiko-style token, the opportunity cost of holding anything else becomes too high. We are entering an era of "yield-as-a-feature."

• Liquidity vs. Yield: The biggest hurdle for these new tokens is liquidity. You can't always swap a tokenized Treasury bill as easily as you can swap USDT. Builders who can solve the secondary market liquidity for yield-bearing assets will win the next few years.
• Composable Capital: The next wave of innovation will involve using these yield-bearing tokens as collateral. Imagine a lending protocol where the collateral itself is generating interest that pays down the loan. That is the kind of efficiency that makes traditional banking look like a relic.
• Regulatory Moats: Spiko’s success shows that the "move fast and break things" era of crypto is over. The new winners are the ones who spend the time and money to get the legal framework right from day one.

The Founder’s Skepticism

I’ve seen enough cycles to know that whenever $90 million enters the room, we should look for the catches. The biggest risk here is the same one that plagues all RWA (Real World Asset) projects: the bridge. You are only as decentralized as your weakest link. If the underlying Treasuries are frozen or the legal entity holding them faces issues, the token is just a digital ghost.

Builders need to be wary of over-reliance on a single provider. While Spiko is currently the darling of the VC world, the space is getting crowded. BlackRock is here. Franklin Templeton is here. The competition for who gets to be the "official" yield-bearing dollar of the internet is going to be brutal. Do not lock your protocol into a single asset until the dust settles.

The Long Game

We are witnessing the professionalization of the industry. The $90 million raised by Spiko will likely go toward scaling their compliance teams and deepening their integration with legacy financial institutions. For the average builder, this is good news. It means the plumbing is getting better. It means the excuses for why crypto isn't ready for prime time are disappearing.

"The goal isn't to build a better crypto token; the goal is to build a better version of money that happens to live on a blockchain."

If you are starting a project today, don't just think about how to move tokens around. Think about the underlying value. The era of the stagnant dollar is over. If your product doesn't account for yield, you are already behind the curve. Spiko just raised the stakes for everyone.

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