Yuval Rooz is the co-founder and CEO of Digital Asset, where he focuses on building blockchain infrastructure that supports institutional-grade financial systems. His work centers on privacy-preserving transaction models, regulated blockchain environments, and the development of the Canton Network as a platform for real-world financial activity. ^[1]

Education

Yuval Rooz earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. ^[1]​

Career

Rooz began his career in education, first working as a teaching assistant at Dunwoody Community College from 2004 to 2005, where he taught math, physics, and chemistry. He then joined the Georgia Institute of Technology from 2005 to 2008, managing the Teaching Assistant Program for the College of Computing and overseeing the hiring and training of teaching assistants.

He moved into finance in 2008, joining Citadel Investment Group in Chicago as part of the FE Global Equities team. His work involved researching risk models for long-short portfolios, optimizing risk limits, and contributing to a backtesting framework for evaluating new risk factors. In mid-2009 he transitioned to DRW, initially making markets in ETFs as a trader. From 2011 to 2014, he advanced to senior algorithmic trader within DRW Venture Capital, leading the equity desk and working on early-stage opportunities aligned with the firm’s expertise. He also briefly served as a board observer for Shiftgig between 2014 and 2015.

Rooz founded Hesta Home in 2014 and led the company until early 2017. During this period, he also joined Digital Asset Holdings as co-founder, working in COO and CFO roles beginning in 2014. In 2019, he became CEO, overseeing the company’s work on distributed ledger infrastructure for financial applications. Alongside his work at Digital Asset, Rooz has invested in early-stage companies. He became a seed investor in Arta Finance in 2021 and later added a seed investment role with Metha AI in 2024. ^[4]​

Interviews

Canton Network

In a September 2025 interview on the Thinking Crypto podcast, Rooz, co-founder and CEO of Digital Asset, discusses the growing intersection between traditional finance and blockchain technology. He outlines his background in Israel and the U.S., including roles at institutions like Citadel and his early work in Bitcoin markets, before explaining how blockchain can streamline securitized loans and reduce operational costs. Rooz describes the Canton Network’s approach to selective disclosure and its dual-layer consensus system, designed to balance privacy with stakeholder agreement, and reflects on the platform’s $145 million fundraising round backed by major financial institutions. He concludes by envisioning a future in which blockchain becomes an embedded, invisible layer of everyday transactions, akin to the internet’s evolution. ^[6]

Privacy Use Cases

In an August 2025 interview on Kiln’s L1 Ecosystems Rendez-Vous, Rooz discusses Digital Asset’s recent $135 million fundraising round and the growing institutional demand for regulated blockchain infrastructure. He reflects on his path from roles at Citadel and DRW to co-founding Digital Asset, explaining how an early focus on improving collateral management eventually led to the creation of the Canton Network. Rooz outlines how Canton uses DAML to support privacy-centric, interoperable financial applications and introduces concepts such as horizontal scaling and the Global Synchronizer to improve transaction efficiency across interconnected “cantons.” He highlights partnerships with firms like NASDAQ and TradeWeb, notes that the network represents more than $4 trillion in tokenized assets, and describes Canton’s ambition to serve as the operational backbone of future financial markets. Rooz closes by pointing to the ecosystem’s organic growth since mainnet launch and emphasizes the value of continued community involvement. ^[7]

Crypto Trailblazers

In a July 2025 interview on theCUBE’s NYSE Wired, Rooz, co-founder and CEO of Digital Asset, discussed the ongoing digitization of financial systems, the rise of programmable money, and the company’s recent funding progress. He described the broader market shift as Bitcoin moves from a niche asset to mainstream attention, framed by regulatory uncertainty and increasing interest in blockchain infrastructure. Rooz highlighted the continued importance of national sovereignty in technological development and argued that the U.S. should maintain leadership in global financial innovation. He emphasized the need for stronger institutional privacy solutions, noting that current public-blockchain models remain insufficient for large financial players. Rooz also outlined Digital Asset’s near-$150 million equity raise and the growing institutional momentum around the Canton Network, pointing to its expanding participation, fee generation, and role in hosting financial services natively on-chain. He closed by illustrating how blockchain can reduce operational inefficiencies in areas like reconciliation-heavy insurance workflows and reaffirmed his aim for Canton to become the preferred on-chain environment for regulated institutions in the coming years. ^[8]

Fundraising Round

In a July 2025 appearance on STM TV’s Security Token Show, Rooz discussed Digital Asset’s recent $135 million raise and its focus on institutional adoption of blockchain-based finance. He explained that the round brought in major industry participants expected to contribute beyond capital. He outlined how the Canton Network is designed with configurable privacy to support use cases such as payments, collateral mobility, and risk management. Rooz noted that the funding will support improvements in scalability, developer tools, marketing, and strategic partnerships—including collaboration with NASDAQ Calypso to enable faster, more efficient collateral transactions. He also described the challenges of genuine asset tokenization and the need for privacy as a standard feature in digital financial systems, while indicating that additional updates and partnerships are planned for the network. ^[9]

The BlockHash Podcast

In July 2025, Yuval Rooz appeared on episode 537 of The BlockHash Podcast hosted by Brandon Zemp. During the discussion, he spoke about Digital Asset’s role in developing infrastructure for tokenized real-world assets, including its platform, tokenization tools, and services designed to support regulatory-compliant digital asset solutions. ^[5]​