From History to Disruption: The Journey of Albert Feng, Co-founder of Archainify

Albert Feng, an entrepreneur with a background in history, has been building bridges between traditional finance and decentralized alternatives through Archainify. In this interview, Albert shares his journey, challenges, and lessons learned along the way. With a focus on Real World Assets and decentralized infrastructure, he’s redefining the future of asset management and cultural capital.

Can you share a brief note about yourself?

My academic background is in history, not finance—a fact I find increasingly relevant the longer I spend in this space. Historians are trained to spot patterns across centuries, to ask not only what happened, but why, and why now. These questions remain startlingly relevant when navigating capital markets, regulatory structures, or emerging technologies.

Over the years, I’ve moved from chronicling the past to attempting—humbly—to shape the future. My current work sits at the intersection of Real World Assets, decentralised infrastructure (DePIN), and regulatory alignment. I often describe what I do as building bridges: between the tangible and the digital, between traditional finance and decentralised alternatives, and perhaps most critically, between trust and innovation. The firm I co-founded, Archainify, is one such bridge—an attempt to reimagine art not simply as aesthetic experience but as asset class and cultural capital.

Why did you choose to start a business?

To be entirely candid, I don’t believe I chose in the romanticised sense of the word. It was less a decision and more an accumulation—a slow, growing dissonance between the world as it is and the world I believed could exist.

I became increasingly aware that the institutions many of us rely on for stability—banks, governments, even cultural custodians—are being outpaced by the complexity of the present. Value, identity, and ownership are being redefined before our eyes, yet our frameworks for navigating them remain stuck in legacy systems. At some point, critique no longer suffices. There’s a limit to how long one can sit in a café discussing what’s broken. Eventually, one must get their hands dirty trying to build alternatives.

So no, I didn’t choose to start a business because I dreamed of entrepreneurship. I did it because silence started to feel complicit.

How did you start your business?

The early days were messy—not in the romantic start-up cinema sense, but in the very human sense of juggling conviction and confusion. We had a thesis: that fine art, as a culturally significant and economically potent asset, deserved a more dynamic place in the modern financial ecosystem. That people should be able to admire, interact with, and even co-own culturally relevant works through secure, compliant, and tokenised systems. But like most first principles, the implementation was anything but straightforward.

We had to wrestle with the realities of jurisdictional constraints, investor protections, IP frameworks, legacy skepticism, and the ever-shifting mood of the crypto market. Legal structures were drawn and redrawn. Our tokenomics models went through multiple evolutions. More than once, we paused to ask whether the world was ready—or whether we were early enough to matter.

What sustained us wasn’t certainty, but commitment. We kept moving. Slowly, strategically. Because while ideas are abundant, endurance is rare—and the latter makes the difference.

What do you wish you’d known before you started your business?

That good ideas don’t scale by themselves. That compliance and creativity must not be seen as adversaries, but as reluctant partners. That speed is a seductive illusion—one that too often disguises superficial progress.

I also wish I had appreciated earlier that credibility is not a given, especially when working across domains. Coming from a non-financial background meant I had to earn trust in rooms where academic pedigree carried less weight than perceived competence. And yet, it’s that very distance—from industry norms, from jargon-laden dogma—that gave me the lens to see opportunities others overlooked.

Lastly, I would have reminded myself that compromise isn’t the same as concession. You can adapt without diluting your principles—but only if you know what they are.

Did you have any support in your journey?

Support often arrived quietly—rarely as grand gestures, more often as subtle interventions. A well-timed question. A connection made in good faith. The patience of a partner who believed when the model was still theoretical.

I’ve benefited from mentorship, yes—but also from collaboration with those more experienced in the regulatory, technical, or commercial aspects of the space. I made a conscious choice to surround myself with individuals who didn’t simply echo my ideas, but challenged them. That friction, when paired with mutual respect, has been far more valuable than any echo chamber.

I also leaned heavily on my academic discipline—on the rigour of inquiry, the tolerance for ambiguity, and the humility to revise one’s thesis. Those skills translated far more usefully than I expected.

What is your greatest challenge as a business owner?

It’s the dissonance between vision and velocity. You often see where the world is going long before others do, but you’re bound by the limitations of infrastructure, market psychology, and bureaucracy. It’s like designing a high-speed train in a country with no tracks.

There’s also the challenge of role duality. As a founder, you’re both strategist and executor, architect and firefighter. You must be fluent in both big-picture thinking and granular problem-solving—and able to shift between them with alarming speed.

But perhaps the deepest challenge is existential: building something enduring in a culture obsessed with the short-term. Convincing people—partners, investors, even your own team—that long-term value creation is not naivety, but wisdom.

What advice would you give to your past self before opening your own business?

Be less anxious about appearing credible. Be more focused on being useful. The former fades quickly without the latter.

I’d tell myself to expect confusion—not just from others, but within. That’s not failure; that’s the cost of attempting anything genuinely novel. And I’d emphasise the importance of legal hygiene and structural clarity early on—it’s unglamorous, but crucial.

Most importantly, I’d remind myself that growth will often come disguised as difficulty. That discomfort is a signal, not a stop sign. And that some forms of slowness—reflection, integrity, deliberation—are not liabilities, but assets in disguise.

Reflecting on your path to entrepreneurship, what key piece of advice would you offer to aspiring founders?

You do not need to be fearless. You only need to proceed despite fear.

Don’t start a business to prove a point. Start one to solve a problem you’re willing to wrestle with for ten years. Ideally, one you care about even if no one claps. Because there will be stretches when no one does.

Listen widely, but decide quietly. Learn to separate noise from signal—not just in the market, but in your own mind. And never outsource your ethics, no matter how compelling the incentives.

Finally, know that doubt is not weakness—it’s a sign you’re paying attention. Just don’t let it paralyse you. Channel it into questions that sharpen, not fears that stall.