Fernando Luis Vázquez Cao is the Chief Executive Officer of SBI Digital Asset Holdings, the President of Banking and Capital Markets at Chainlink Labs, and serves on the boards of several financial and technology organizations.

Early Life

Vázquez Cao is a native of Spain and has resided in Japan for approximately two decades. His early career began in academia, where he became an active participant in the Linux and open-source software communities during the early 1990s. ^{[1] [2]}

Education

Vázquez Cao attended the Universidade de Vigo in Spain, where he also worked as a researcher. His academic work and involvement with the open-source movement formed the foundation for his subsequent career in the technology sector. ^{[3] [8]}

Career

Vázquez Cao's professional career started in academia before he transitioned to the corporate sector in 2003 with a position at the Japanese telecommunications firm NTT Group. At NTT, he held several roles and was a founding member and technical director of the company's Open Source Software Center. In this capacity, he led a team that made significant contributions to open-source projects that are foundational to modern cloud and internet services, focusing on developing enterprise-grade features for mission-critical systems, which served as a basis for later work with blockchain technology.

In 2016, he moved into the financial technology industry by joining the Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Group. He held numerous senior positions within the group, including Chief Technology Officer of Japannext and CEO of both SBI DigiTrust and SBI Security Solutions. He was also a founding member and director of SBI VC Trade and held leadership roles at SBI Remit.

In July 2020, Vázquez Cao was appointed CEO of SBI Digital Asset Holdings (SBI DAH), a subsidiary established to oversee the group's digital asset-related businesses and global expansion. Under his leadership, SBI DAH aims to develop end-to-end digital asset solutions for financial institutions and transform capital markets and banking value chains. He has guided the company through several key initiatives, including a partnership with SIX Group to launch AsiaNext, an institutional digital asset exchange, and a joint venture with Standard Chartered's Zodia Custody to create a crypto asset custodian in Japan. He also led SBI DAH's participation in Project Guardian, an initiative by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) alongside J.P. Morgan and DBS Bank to explore asset tokenization. ^{[6] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [8] [9] [10]}

Board Memberships and Advisory Roles

In addition to his executive role at SBI DAH, Vázquez Cao holds several board and advisory positions across the digital asset and finance industries. He is a member of the Board of Directors at Sygnum, a regulated digital asset bank. In September 2021, he was appointed as a Non-Executive Director to the board of the cryptocurrency derivatives exchange BitMEX.

His other board memberships include the Cardano Foundation and AsiaNext. He also serves on the Monetary Authority of Singapore's International Technology Advisory Panel, where he provides policy recommendations. ^{[2] [3] [4]}

Views on Digital Assets and Regulation

Vázquez Cao is a proponent of strong regulatory frameworks for the digital asset industry. Drawing from his experience during the dot-com era, he has stated that the "move fast and break things" ethos is unsuitable for financial services, where customer assets are at stake. He emphasizes that "failure is not an option for digital assets" and advocates for a collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach to governance to build a trusted ecosystem.

He believes that for decentralized finance (DeFi) to achieve mainstream adoption, it requires "trust anchors and gatekeepers" similar to how institutional support helped legitimize open-source software. In his view, the future of finance will involve a variety of digital assets, including central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), stablecoins, and tokenized deposits, with safety and security as the primary objectives. He has also written about the necessity of institutional-grade market infrastructure, including robust custody, liquidity solutions, and cybersecurity, to unlock the full potential of tokenized securities for institutional investors. ^{[1] [7]}

Interviews

Unlocking TradFi with DeFi #01

On 2 November 2022, Fernando Luis Vázquez Cao took part in the panel “Unlocking TradFi with DeFi” at the Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF 2022), held at 1:30 PM in the Knowledge Plenary. The session recording was later released on the official Singapore FinTech Festival YouTube channel on 27 September 2023.

During the discussion, Vázquez Cao outlined his perspective on the role of tokenization in financial markets. He described tokenization as a method for representing assets in digital form and argued that it enables standardized instruments and programmable settlement on blockchain systems. In his view, this could contribute to efficiency, greater liquidity, and broader access, while reducing reliance on existing intermediaries.

He emphasized that institutional adoption of decentralized finance (DeFi) requires permissioned frameworks and identity mechanisms to address regulatory obligations such as Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (CFT). According to him, verifiable credentials and tokenized identities could provide a means to establish compliance while maintaining certain levels of privacy.

Vázquez Cao also noted the operational challenges of connecting blockchain-based protocols with traditional financial infrastructure. He pointed to areas such as contract auditing, cybersecurity resilience, and the redesign of governance and compliance processes as central to this transition.

Another aspect he discussed was the tokenization of commercial bank deposits on public blockchains, which he considered a way to link digital asset systems to the existing banking structure while supporting interoperability with decentralized applications.

Finally, he addressed the role of automated market makers (AMMs), highlighting that current designs do not fully match the requirements of institutional trading environments. He suggested that further development of AMM models, alongside collaboration between financial institutions, regulators, and technology providers, would be necessary for broader institutional participation and the establishment of common standards in the sector. ^[11]

Singapore FinTech Festival 2024 #02

On December 4, 2024, Fernando Luis Vázquez Cao took part in the Singapore FinTech Festival, where he presented a talk he referred to as "the yellow circle." In this presentation, he examined the role of commoditisation in technology and financial systems, framing it as a process that underpins long-term structural change. He drew comparisons between the trajectory of open-source software and the development of blockchain technologies.

Vázquez Cao stated that governance and collaboration are necessary conditions for the broader adoption of emerging technologies. He observed that aligning developers, enterprises, and end-users requires frameworks capable of balancing experimentation with practical application. He also referred to examples from the history of open-source software, such as Linux and PostgreSQL, where corporate involvement supported development and adoption, suggesting that similar dynamics could apply in the blockchain field.

He further pointed out that the usefulness of applications tends to outweigh the appeal of novelty in driving adoption. According to his view, end-users and businesses focus on functionality, while standards and interoperability create the stability needed for growth.

In discussing commoditisation, he indicated that open platforms became the basis for areas such as cloud computing and software-as-a-service. In his assessment, blockchain could follow a similar path if developed with attention to institutional requirements and real-world applications. He suggested that this approach would contribute to the gradual evolution of financial infrastructure rather than its replacement.

Vázquez Cao concluded by noting that innovation often emerges through commoditisation. He identified governance, collaboration, and utility as recurring factors in enabling systemic change across both technology and finance. ^[12]