Florian M Spiegl founded Evident to address what he sees as a persistent gap between investor demand for private assets and the operational complexity involved in originating, distributing and servicing those assets. He described Evident as a full-stack platform designed to support the entire lifecycle of tokenised private market instruments, from structuring and issuance through to trading, post-trade processing and ongoing administration.

Spiegl positioned Evident squarely within private markets rather than public cryptoassets or speculative trading activity. He said the platform focuses on private equity, private credit and fund-based structures, where access remains constrained and servicing remains fragmented despite growing interest from institutional and professional investors.

He explained that tokenisation delivers the most value where assets are complex, illiquid and operationally intensive. In such markets, digital infrastructure can improve transparency and access without altering the underlying economic characteristics of the assets themselves.

Spiegl emphasised that Evident is designed for professional and qualified investors, including institutions, family offices and sophisticated private wealth clients. He said the platform is not intended for mass retail distribution and operates within clearly defined regulatory boundaries.

The firm’s approach, he noted, reflects a belief that tokenisation should solve structural problems in private markets rather than replicate public-market trading models on a blockchain.

From Credit Suisse to Finfabrik – early lessons in digitising market infrastructure

Spiegl traced the origins of his approach to Evident back to his early career at Credit Suisse, where he began in Austria before being posted to Singapore. He said that period exposed him to the operational complexity embedded in large financial institutions, particularly the reliance on manual processes across trading, servicing and reporting functions.

He explained that many of these processes were critical to risk management and client servicing, yet were fragmented across systems and teams. Efforts to digitise them, he said, often focused on front-end interfaces rather than addressing underlying workflows and data architecture.

These experiences led him to co-found Finfabrik, a venture focused on digitising and automating specific manual processes within financial markets infrastructure. He described Finfabrik as an attempt to apply technology to operational execution rather than product innovation, particularly in areas where inefficiency created cost, delay and operational risk.

Spiegl said building and ultimately exiting Finfabrik reinforced a central lesson: digital transformation delivers lasting value only when it addresses the full operational chain rather than isolated points of friction. Solutions layered on top of legacy processes, he noted, often struggle to scale or sustain impact.

He described these lessons as foundational to Evident’s design philosophy, shaping the decision to build an end-to-end platform rather than a narrow tokenisation layer dependent on downstream manual intervention.

Why full-stack matters in private market tokenisation

Spiegl described Evident’s full-stack approach as a response to persistent fragmentation across private market infrastructure. He said many platforms focus narrowly on issuance or distribution while leaving post-trade processes unresolved.
He explained that inefficiencies frequently surface after issuance, when assets require servicing, reporting, corporate actions and secondary transfers. Without integrated post-trade capabilities, these processes often revert to manual workflows, undermining the efficiency gains promised by tokenisation.

By contrast, Spiegl said Evident was designed to manage the full asset lifecycle within a single operating framework. This includes origination and structuring, investor onboarding, execution, post-trade processing and ongoing administration.
He noted that full-stack integration supports consistent governance, data integrity and compliance across all stages of the lifecycle. For private assets, he said, this consistency is essential given the bespoke nature and limited transparency of traditional structures.

Spiegl added that this design choice shapes how Evident scales. The platform is built to support fewer but larger and more complex transactions, where operational reliability and governance matter more than transaction velocity.

Early operating lessons from tokenising a single freighter through Greenseas

Spiegl referred to his work with Greenseas as another formative experience that influenced Evident’s development. He described Greenseas as an initiative focused on tokenising and fractionalising ownership in a specific physical asset — a commercial freighter.

He explained that the project required translating a tangible, capital-intensive asset into a structure capable of supporting fractional ownership, investor rights and ongoing servicing. This exposed the practical complexity involved in aligning legal ownership, cash-flow entitlements and operational realities with a digital representation.

Spiegl noted that while representing fractional interests digitally was technically achievable, the harder challenges lay in governance, reporting and lifecycle management. Investor communication, enforcement of economic rights and secondary transfers became central considerations.

He said this experience highlighted the limitations of approaches that focus narrowly on issuance. Tokenising the freighter was only the starting point; maintaining operational integrity over time required infrastructure capable of handling post-issuance events in a disciplined manner.

Spiegl described these lessons as directly informing Evident’s insistence on full-lifecycle support for private assets with long operating horizons.

China as both origination engine and demand driver

Spiegl described China as playing a dual role in Evident’s operating model, functioning both as a source of asset origination and as a pool of investor demand.
On the origination side, he pointed to continued deal flow in private equity and private credit, particularly in technology-driven and industrial transformation sectors. These assets, he said, often seek capital structures beyond domestic funding channels.

At the same time, Spiegl observed growing investor interest linked to China across Asia. He noted that family offices and private wealth investors are increasingly active, particularly those familiar with Chinese business models and supply chains.
He explained that tokenisation helps bridge these two sides by enabling fractionalisation and more flexible distribution structures, allowing assets linked to China to reach a broader base of professional investors.\

Deal size, he added, is a defining factor. Many China-linked transactions sit between traditional private placements and public issuance, reinforcing the relevance of private, digitally enabled distribution models.

Building towards profitability through platform economics rather than balance-sheet risk

Spiegl described Evident’s path to profitability as driven by operating leverage rather than balance-sheet exposure. He said the firm does not generate returns by holding assets or taking principal risk.

He explained that Evident’s revenue model spans multiple fee points, including structuring and origination fees, transaction-related fees and recurring revenues from post-trade processing and administration. This allows revenue to scale with asset volumes without proportional increases in capital.

A key element of this model is the use of warehouse structures to support early-stage origination. He described how warehouse funding allows assets to be originated, tokenised and seasoned before broader distribution.

Spiegl referred to plans to scale the warehouse fund to a level that balances origination capacity with prudent capital deployment.

Cost discipline, he added, is central to the model. By owning the core technology stack, Evident avoids complex third-party integrations and improves unit economics as activity becomes repeatable.

Choosing where to operate – regulatory specificity as a decision filter

Spiegl said Hong Kong’s appeal lay not in general regulatory openness but in the precision of its legal framework for tokenised securities (private equity/debt). He referred specifically to Hong Kong’s digital securities framework under the Securities and Futures Ordinance (SFO), which sets out the framework for licensing, investor eligibility, custody, governance and permitted activities under the oversight of the Securities and Futures Commission.

He explained that the SFO framework reduced interpretive risk. Rather than relying on broad principles or informal guidance, Evident could design its operating model against explicit statutory and regulatory requirements.

Spiegl said he had personally reviewed the SFO framework in depth, describing repeated readings to understand how the rules would apply in practice to issuance, trading and post-trade servicing of tokenised private assets.

That clarity, he noted, made Hong Kong more suitable for a full-stack platform than jurisdictions where regulatory expectations remain fluid. Looking ahead, he said Evident is evaluating Dubai as a potential next jurisdiction, citing alignment between regulatory ambition, capital availability and institutional interest.

Scaling deliberately in private markets

Spiegl described Evident’s development as deliberate rather than accelerated. He said the firm prioritises regulatory clarity, institutional demand and disciplined economics over speed.

He emphasised that Evident’s strategy is to deepen its role across the private asset lifecycle rather than broaden indiscriminately into new products or markets.
China’s dual role as origination engine and demand driv, he noted, reinforces the relevance of this approach as family offices and private wealth investors play a larger role alongside institutions.

Spiegl said profitability improves incrementally as asset pipelines mature, repeat issuance increases and post-trade revenues accumulate.

He characterised Evident’s next phase as measured expansion, guided by regulatory alignment and execution discipline rather than geographic reach alone.