Good morning and welcome to Kaupr Today!

This week's episode of Kaupr Weekly asks the question everyone in crypto is debating right now: is this crypto spring — or just another "sell the news" moment? Give it a listen after the read.

Today we lead with something a little different: AI is no longer just a product story — it is a management crisis. Three in four companies now have a Chief AI Officer, employees are running shadow AI tools without IT knowing, and ServiceNow is racing to own the governance layer. The boardroom is being rewired in real time.

Other stories in today's newsletter:

♦️ Bitcoin tops $82,000 as spot ETFs pull nearly $1B in two trading days.
♦️ Tom Lee calls ETH at $9,000–$12,000 by year-end and declares crypto spring has begun.
♦️ Kraken raises at a $20B valuation and signals it is 80% ready to go public.
♦️ Galaxy and SharpLink launch a $125M institutional DeFi yield fund seeded by ETH treasury.
♦️ 77% of Binance users now come from emerging markets — and they are using crypto as a bank.

Have a great read — and happy listening!

Morten

IBM surveyed 2,000 CEOs globally and found 76% have now established a Chief AI Officer role, up from 26% in 2025. McKinsey calls it "the largest organisational shift since the industrial and digital revolutions." The main blocker is not technology — 93% cite culture.

Why it matters: The CAIO is becoming the governance layer enterprises are betting on to manage AI at scale. For Nordic financial institutions and fintechs building AI strategies, this is the model emerging across global peers.

Source: Here's how artificial intelligence is changing boardrooms — CNBC

At Knowledge 2026, ServiceNow launched an expanded AI Control Tower — capable of discovering, governing, and measuring AI agents across enterprise environments regardless of vendor. It also introduced Otto, a unified conversational AI spanning the full platform, and announced Project Arc with NVIDIA for secure autonomous agents.

Why it matters: The race to own enterprise AI governance infrastructure is intensifying. ServiceNow is positioning itself as the single pane of glass across fragmented AI deployments — critical as regulated industries like banking and fintech scale agentic systems.

Source: ServiceNow aims to be enterprise AI control plane after Knowledge 2026 — Yahoo Finance

Business Insider reports a surge in employees using unapproved AI tools — Claude, NotebookLM and others — without IT knowledge, often to dramatically compress work time. One worker condensed 150 hours of work into 30 minutes. About half of company leaders do not know the extent of AI use inside their organisations, and only four in ten have a formal governance policy.

Why it matters: Shadow AI is the gap between official strategy and what employees are actually doing. For financial services firms — where data governance is non-negotiable — the absence of AI policy is itself a compliance risk.

Source: The sneaky rise of shadow AI in the workplace — Business Insider

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Bitcoin briefly crossed $82,000 on Monday, driven by 11 consecutive days of ETF inflows and improved macro sentiment post US-China trade deal. SUI jumped 25% after Nasdaq-listed Sui Group Holdings staked 108.7 million SUI, removing a significant chunk of circulating supply.

Why it matters: ETF inflows and on-chain staking are pulling supply out of circulation simultaneously. The structural demand signals matter more than the price print.

Source: Bitcoin briefly tops $82,000 on improving macro conditions; Sui jumps 25% — The Block

Bitcoin gained 11.8% in April — its strongest month since April 2025 — and the Nasdaq hit an all-time high of 23,235 points. US consumer sentiment, meanwhile, has hit record lows. Analysts say the divergence reflects markets increasingly driven by institutional capital and innovation cycles rather than household finances.

Why it matters: The decoupling between Wall Street and Main Street is structural, not temporary — with direct implications for how digital assets are positioned as an investment class.

Source: Bitcoin, Nasdaq investors are celebrating, while U.S. consumers are panicking — CoinDesk

Bitmine chairman Tom Lee set year-end targets at Consensus Miami: ETH at $9,000–$12,000, BTC at $150,000–$200,000. He called the crypto winter over and said a close above $2,100 at month-end would confirm "crypto spring." ETH trades near $2,320 — the target implies a roughly 4x move.

Why it matters: Lee backs his calls with $12 billion in ETH on Bitmine's balance sheet. Treasury conviction and public price forecasts converging is itself a market signal.

Source: Bitmine's Tom Lee Bets Big On Ethereum With New 2026 Prediction — Yahoo Finance / BeInCrypto

US spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in roughly $532 million and $467 million on back-to-back trading days last week — one of the strongest two-day stretches since launch. BlackRock's IBIT and Fidelity's FBTC led. Total net assets across US spot ETFs now stand at a record $108.76 billion.

Why it matters: Inflows at this pace mechanically remove BTC from circulating supply. This is institutional allocation, not retail momentum.

Source: Institutional inflows surge as US spot ETFs near $1B in two days — HedgeCo

Payward, Kraken's parent, is raising fresh capital at a $20 billion valuation ahead of a planned IPO. Recent acquisitions include stablecoin payments firm Reap ($600M) and derivatives platform Bitnomial ($550M). Co-CEO Arjun Sethi told Consensus Miami the company is "80% ready" to go public.

Why it matters: Kraken is rebuilding itself as full-spectrum financial infrastructure — with the regulatory standing and institutional capital that previous neobank cycles lacked.

Source: Kraken parent Payward seeks fresh funding at $20 billion valuation ahead of potential IPO — CoinDesk

Paris-listed Capital B raised €15.2 million ($17.8M) through a private placement backed by Blockstream CEO Adam Back and French asset manager TOBAM. Proceeds fund roughly 182 additional BTC, lifting holdings to 3,125 BTC. Attached warrants could unlock a further €99.1 million. This is Back's second Capital B investment in a week.

Why it matters: Back's repeated personal backing — two investments in one week — signals that the BTC treasury model is gaining serious institutional traction in Europe, not just the US.

Source: French BTC treasury firm Capital B raises $18 million from Adam Back, others — The Block

Executives from Bitwise, eToro, and a16z Crypto said at Consensus Miami that DeFi is moving into the financial mainstream, driven by AI agents needing on-chain financial rails. eToro CEO Yoni Assia pointed to over $100 billion locked in DeFi lending markets. Bitwise is now fielding requests from regulated fintechs and neobanks for compliant DeFi exposure.

Why it matters: When institutions actively seek DeFi access, the debate shifts from "whether" to "how" — a transition that will shape regulatory frameworks, including in the Nordics.

Source: 'DeFi is not dead,' it's going mainstream with AI agents, crypto executives agree — CoinDesk

Galaxy Digital and SharpLink are launching the Galaxy SharpLink Onchain Yield Fund — $125 million in initial commitments, with $100 million from SharpLink's staked ETH treasury and $25 million from Galaxy, which serves as investment manager. Capital deploys into DeFi liquidity protocols and on-chain yield strategies.

Why it matters: A publicly listed company using its crypto treasury as seed capital for an institutional DeFi fund is a first. It could become the template for how corporate ETH holdings generate yield.

Source: Galaxy and Sharplink Plan to Launch First of its Kind, Institutional Onchain Yield Fund with $125 Million in Commitments — Forbes / PR Newswire

Manchester-based Keel emerged from stealth this week as a profitable Banking-as-a-Service platform. It started life in 2019 as consumer neobank Frost, hit 18,000 users, then pivoted when the energy switching market collapsed in 2022. Now FCA-authorised with Visa Principal Membership, its clients include a Southeast Asian platform with 750,000 users.

Why it matters: In a BaaS sector scarred by high-profile failures, Keel's model — profitability before scale, built on first-hand operating experience — is a differentiating signal for fintechs choosing infrastructure partners.

Source: Keel unveils fintech infrastructure business after pivot from neobank — Tech.eu

Binance Research reports 77% of its users now come from emerging markets, up from 49% in 2020. In those markets, 36% of users hold half or more of their portfolio in stablecoins — consistent with savings behaviour, not trading. Stablecoin transfers cost as little as $0.0001 versus a $20 minimum for SWIFT.

Why it matters: Adoption in emerging markets is driven by necessity, not speculation. Stablecoins are the primary tool — and the same use case is shaping the stablecoin regulation debate in Europe right now.

Source: Emerging market users are treating crypto exchanges like banking apps, Binance says — CoinDesk

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Wishing you a great Tuesday — and welcome back on Wednesday morning for the next edition of Kaupr Today.

Best regards
Morten Myrstad
Founder & Editor