MiCA-licensed Tesseract has launched Dedicated Client Vaults, segregated smart contract payout accounts designed for institutions wary of pooled DeFi products.
summary
- Tesseract, a MiCA-licensed Finnish cryptocurrency asset manager, has launched dedicated client vaults for institutional and professional investors.
- Each vault is a separate smart contract linked to a single client, allowing institutions to retain 100% ownership of treasury tokens while meeting MiCA custody rules.
- CEO James Harris says pooled return vaults like Morpho could be treated as collective investment schemes under MiCA, exposing users to the risk of unlicensed securities.
Finnish crypto asset manager Tesseract Investment Oy, one of the first companies to receive the full amount Mika Licensed in the EU, it has launched a new on-chain yield platform called Tesseract Dedicated Client Vaults aimed directly at institutional and professional investors. The offering, which The Block reported via company materials, is designed so that each vault is an independent smart contract allocated to a single client and managed by Tesseract, rather than a shared pool of capital. Clients deploy vaults from their own wallets, hold 100% of the vault tokens representing their assets, and maintain segregated custodial accounts that meet MiCA requirements for segregation and custody of client assets.
In a recent LinkedIn post outlining “5 key things organizations need from onchain vaults,” Tesseract CEO James Harris drew a sharp line between custodial vaults and pooled return vaults, warning that the latter may fall under EU rules for collective investment pledges. “We see MiCA as an opportunity, not a burden,” Harris said in a separate interview on the Alt Funds Network, adding that institutions are “looking at… Decentralized finance Through the lens of regulation, separation and control – not just APY. He pointed to popular pooled structures such as Morpho vaults as examples of products that could be treated as collective investment schemes under MiCA supervision, putting them within the orbit of UCITS or AIFMD rules if their yield tokens represent a share of pooled capital with a specific investment strategy.
The European Securities and Markets Authority’s final report on the MiCA guidelines notes that a crypto asset should be classified as a unit in a collective investment project if it “represents a share in a pooled investment with the aim of generating a return for investors in accordance with a defined investment policy.” Harris argues that many aggregated DeFi yield products fit this description, which could make their yield tokens unlicensed securities when marketed to EU investors. In contrast, Tesseract’s custom client vaults hold each institution’s assets in its own smart contract, without pooling capital or sharing returns between different investors, more clearly in line with MiCA’s crypto-asset service provider regime rather than fund regulation.
MiCA License from Tesseract, granted by FinlandIn 2025, the Helsinki-based company will be permitted by the Financial Supervisory Authority to provide portfolio management, custody and asset transfer services to both individual and professional clients across the European Union. Private Banker International described the company’s strategy as “betting on aligned yield as the cornerstone of the industry’s next growth phase,” citing planned innovations such as risk-linked return strategies and token vaults designed for banks, wealth managers and corporates.
The launch of custom client vaults comes at a time when traditional cryptocurrency trading has lost much of its appeal. A recent note cited by Gate.io noted that the annual yield on the once popular cash-and-carry bitcoin arbitrage has collapsed from more than 17% to about 5%, barely more than the roughly 3.5% yield on one-year U.S. Treasuries. “The era of easy, virtually risk-free institutional money in crypto is decisively over,” Harris said in the article, describing current conditions as a “tactical reset” rather than a complete institutional exit.
In a previous crypto.news story on how the GENIUS Act and MiCA will reshape stablecoin and decentralized finance infrastructure, legal experts argued that yielding products would need to move closer to regulated funds or delegation-style structures in order to survive, especially for European clients. Another story about South Korea’s race to issue bank-backed stablecoins highlighted how global institutions are increasingly demanding clear legal frameworks before deploying capital in on-chain return strategies. A third story examining the end of the easy cash-and-carry era emphasized that future crypto returns for institutions are likely to come from more complex, compliance-first products rather than simple spread trades – exactly the niche segment that Tesseract appears to be targeting with its MiCA-compliant vaults.
