S&P Global Is Making a Big Move into Crypto
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| By Juan Villaverde |
You likely already know S&P Global (SPGI).
If a bond sits in your brokerage account, an S&P letter grade is probably on it. That grade says whether the issuer can pay you back.
But it was never built to catch a bug in the software.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) is lending and trading that runs on public blockchains instead of at a bank. The risk that kept careful investors out has always been the same …
Hacks. Lost funds. Unsound practices.
Now, that’s changing.
The skeptics who used to talk this market down are stepping in. Including S&P Global.
A Toe in the Water
To understand the latest chapter of this story, we first have to go back to last summer.
In August 2025, S&P was already inside the credit layer of DeFi. It rated Sky Protocol (SKY) on whether its stablecoins — USDS and DAI — could cover demand to redeem.1
Stablecoins, you may recall, were the first real bridge between the crypto and TradFi systems. They’re pegged 1-to-1 to the almighty dollar. But they benefit from living on the blockchain.
That means transactions can settle instantly, anywhere at any time.
Related Story: 3 Days to 5 Seconds: Crypto’s Infrastructure Investment
So, it makes sense that S&P’s first toe in the water was to rate two such stablecoins.
That was just the beginning.
In October 2025, S&P published Stablecoin Stability Assessments,2 a report that rated stablecoins across the board on a scale from 1 to 5 based on how well each holds its value.
Here’s the important part: It didn’t rely on its own data. It put the scores through Chainlink (LINK), an on-chain oracle that pulls outside data onto the blockchain.
That was the first instance of S&P looking to crypto native projects to expand its data set. But it wouldn’t be the last.
S&P Dives Deeper into DeFi
In early September 2026, it released the S&P Kaiko Digital Asset Indices.3 By July, that fund methodology already scored smart-contract integrity.
S&P named the code as a rating factor before it agreed to buy the code shop. On Sept. 14, S&P led a funding round for Kaiko — a Paris-founded market-data firm for crypto.4
Think of it as a Bloomberg terminal for assets that never sleep.
The round is a Series B (a growth round, not funding for a brand-new company) that, at the time of writing, has raised a total of $110 million.
S&P's own check was not disclosed. But a glance at the names who invested alongside it are serious players, including …
- BNP Paribas,
- Broadridge,
- Coinbase Ventures,
- DRW Venture Capital,
- Nasdaq Ventures,
- Royal Bank of Canada,
- And Susquehanna, among others.5
The money goes to market data for digital assets and to infrastructure for on-chain capital markets. (On-chain means the record lives on a public ledger, not in a private database.)
The products in the Kaiko Digital Asset Indices are ones you already know — Treasury bills, money-market funds, equities, and bonds.
The difference though is that now, they’ve been tokenized and can trade freely on the blockchain. At any time.
One important thing about DeFi to keep in mind is that it all runs on smart contracts. These are pieces of code that are basically “if/then” algorithms. If certain conditions are met, tokens get moved around.
That’s how the entire system can operate without middlemen interfering. And how crypto can run 24/4.
And that’s where Kaiko comes in. It delivers real-world asset prices into smart contracts. Then, it pulls the activity back out as standardized data.
In simple English, Kaiko is an index and data investment. The very same business S&P is already in, just adapted for the crypto market.
That’s why S&P invested. But it wasn’t done with expanding its direct crypto exposure just yet.
Because an S&P grade on a tokenized fund does not mean the software is safe. A rating is an opinion. Audits miss bugs. Nothing in this space is a sure thing.
So, three days later, on Sept. 17, S&P agreed to buy OpenZeppelin,6 a firm that audits other people's smart contracts before they go live.
S&P and OpenZeppelin say the contracts the latter has audited have carried more than $37 trillion in value transferred. That includes nine of the ten top stablecoins, though the figure closer to assets under management is the $125.9 billion in total value locked (TVL).7
From S&P's side, the logic is simple: OpenZeppelin will "complement our smart contract and on-chain technology risk assessment capabilities."8
If Kaiko is the data play, OpenZeppelin is the ratings move. Though I will note that terms were not disclosed and the agreement isn’t finalized.
Who Controls the Data?
These latest developments make the case that SPGI could be a way to gain tokenization exposure.
After all, it’s answer to its crypto blind spot wasn’t just to secure better data via Kaiko. But also to own the shop that writes and audits the code running underneath the projects that rely on said data.
That gives S&P much more insight into their ratings when it comes to tokenized products.
At least, it should.
But when someone pitches a tokenized Treasury fund, a stablecoin, or a crypto product that pays you for locking money in a program, you need to ask two questions …
- Who rated the issuer and the reserves?
- Who audited the contracts, and is that auditor independent of the rater?
In this case, both end up asking the same question. And it’s one any investor interested in this thesis will have to answer …
After the deal closes and S&P publishes one score that covers the issuer and the code, who grades the grader?
Best,
Juan Villaverde
1https://www.spglobal.com/ratings/en/regulatory/article/-/view/sourceId/101639449
6https://www.openzeppelin.com/news/spglobal-enters-agreement-to-acquire-openzeppelin
