David Sutter has left Marco Polo Network to found OpenTrade, a platform aiming to connect decentralized financial liquidity pools to assets including supply chain finance.
Sutter joined Marco Polo Network – then known as TradeIX – in 2017 and most recently served as Chief Product Officer. During his time at the Blockchain-Trade-Finance Consortium, he brought its enterprise software platform and several bank-grade blockchain-based solutions into production with 30 financial institutions and their corporate clients.
Previously, in 2014, he co-founded Hijro, a company focused on applying blockchain technology to mainstream financial services.
Built on the blockchain technology provided by Circle, OpenTrade embeds USDC stablecoin payments and funding directly into B2B networks and systems, which Sutter says offers buyers and suppliers a much faster, cheaper, and more efficient form of payment and working capital funding than today are offering with legacy solutions.
Sutter will assume the CEO role of the new company, while former TradeIX colleague Jeff Handler is OpenTrade’s chief commercial officer. He is joined in the C-suite as co-founder by Chief Technology Officer Tom Niermann – another former TradeIX employee who most recently worked at Meta – and Michael Harte as Chief Operating Officer.
“We want to make investing in supply chain finance as easy as using it [investment app] Robin Hood. With just a few clicks, investors can put USDC into funds, which then automatically fund suppliers through their existing interfaces,” he says GTRand adds that the goal is to source supply chain financial assets directly from business-to-business networks, as well as from accounting and enterprise resource planning systems.
Based on a number of factors such as ratings, size, currency or jurisdiction, OpenTrade will tokenize these assets and push them into a liquidity pool on a public and permissionless blockchain where they can be purchased by investors using stablecoins. An on-chain smart contract then delivers a USD stablecoin transfer, which the supplier receives in their bank account.
While using blockchain to increase the flow of funds into the trade finance market is not a new concept, OpenTrade is turning its attention to the vast global pools of crypto liquidity.
“There’s $150 billion in stablecoin capital sitting there earning no interest. Unlike speculative coins and tokens, investors are looking for on-chain investments that offer stable, predictable returns. We will bring an entirely new investor into supply chain finance alongside the traditional existing funds,” says Sutter.
By using digital dollars in the form of USDC – the world’s second largest stablecoin by market cap – OpenTrade also tries to make the process easier and more transparent.
“One of the key inefficiencies I’ve seen throughout my career is that while the assets are digital, the payments remain offline,” says Sutter. “This is causing a massive reconciliation headache and you really haven’t changed anything. But when value movement and asset movement happen on the same public, permissionless blockchain, you can automate the entire funding process and payment flow across the transaction lifecycle with smart contracts, which is a huge differentiator.”
Aside from supply chain finance, OpenTrade’s go-to-market products include liquidity pools for US Treasuries and commercial paper.
Sutter is the latest departure from Marco Polo Network. In September last year, Daniel Cotti, Managing Director of the Consortium, Center of Excellence Banking and Trade, left the company to focus on advisory and join rival trade finance platform Contour as an advisor the following month.
Marco Polo Network has not announced a replacement for Sutter.
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