Welcome to Kaupr Today

Good morning! Asian stocks are bouncing on stronger US factory data, but bitcoin is still grinding below the equity relief rally, trading a fragile range between a potential breakdown toward $70k and a still‑distant reclaim of the high‑$80,000s. At the same time, Europe is quietly hardening its crypto and payments plumbing—from DAC8 tax transparency and new compliance infrastructure to Nordic exchange build‑outs and Ripple and Vipps MobilePay moves that push blockchain and account‑to‑account rails deeper into the EU’s financial stack.

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Kaupr Today is your daily briefing on digital assets, fintech, and web3 with a strong Nordic lens. It brings concise, high‑signal updates on markets, products, companies, community initiatives, and standout content from Kaupr’s channels (including Kaupr TV and events) and leading regional players.

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Have a good read,
Morten

Asian stock rebound, bitcoin still lagging

Asian stocks as risk‑sentiment gauge: US factory data steadies markets and bitcoin

A note from The Edge Malaysia highlights how stronger‑than‑expected US manufacturing data improved global risk sentiment, setting Asian equities up for gains while helping bitcoin and other risk assets stabilize after recent turmoil, even as concerns about hawkish Fed policy, AI‑driven equity froth and crypto deleveraging still cap upside. Once the macro path for rates and growth becomes clearer, the piece implies that beta‑sensitive assets in Asia and cyclicals could see further relief, but today’s move should be read as a tentative bounce rather than the start of a durable risk‑on trend.​

Why it matters: This gives allocators a macro frame: treat Asian equities and crypto as tightly linked expressions of global growth and liquidity sentiment, where better US data can trigger short‑term relief rallies but does not eliminate the overhang from policy uncertainty and positioning in crowded AI and crypto trades.​

Source: Asian stocks set to climb after US data lifts mood,The Edge Malaysia

Bitcoin technicals as positioning gauge: fragile bounce with support near $70k

MarketWatch’s live blog notes that after briefly dropping below $75,000, bitcoin is attempting a rebound in the high‑$70,000s, but Fairlead Strategies’ Katie Stockton argues that BTC must reclaim roughly $88,600 this week to avoid a “confirmed breakdown,” with the next significant support zone around $70,000 if the bounce fails. The setup frames current price action as a corrective phase where short‑term oversold conditions can fuel interim rallies, yet the failure to re‑establish the high‑$80,000s as support would leave positioning skewed toward another leg lower.

Why it matters: This gives traders and allocators a technical frame: treat the current move as a vulnerable rebound within a broader consolidation, with $88k as a tactical bull/bear line and ~$70k as the area where dip‑buying and longer‑horizon capital are more likely to re‑engage if macro conditions do not deteriorate sharply.

Source: Here’s bitcoin’s next support level as it attempts to bounce from last week’s decline, MarketWatch

Bitcoin as a liquidity barometer: CoinShares’ 2025 lessons

CoinShares’ “liquidity lens” note argues that Bitcoin has traded as a proxy for global dollar liquidity, lagging in 2025’s tightening regime even as narratives stayed bullish, while altcoins saw deeper outflows as fragmented liquidity rotated to majors, AI stocks and gold. Once policy, regulatory and geopolitical uncertainty clears, they expect assets that re‑priced fastest on the way down—especially BTC—to move fastest in the next expansion.​

Why it matters: This gives allocators a macro frame: treat BTC as a high‑beta liquidity gauge with asymmetric upside in the next easing cycle, and altcoins as leveraged expressions of surplus liquidity rather than core structural holdings.​

Source: The liquidity lens: lessons from 2025 and a look ahead, CoinShares

Crypto tax transparency and compliance

EU crypto tax transparency: 12 member states lag on DAC8 implementation

STEP and related legal reporting highlight that twelve EU member states, including Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Portugal, missed the deadline to transpose Directive (EU) 2023/2226 (DAC8) on automatic exchange of information for crypto‑assets into national law, prompting the European Commission to issue letters of formal notice and open infringement procedures. The lag creates a short window—around two months—for these countries to outline corrective steps, even as the broader EU framework moves toward stricter reporting and cross‑border data‑sharing obligations for crypto‑asset service providers.

Why it matters: This gives compliance and strategy teams a regulatory frame: implementation gaps do not change the direction of travel—toward higher transparency and tax enforcement on crypto—but they do create near‑term uncertainty and potential frictions across jurisdictions that firms must navigate in their licensing, reporting and product rollout plans.

Source: Twelve EU Member States miss deadline for crypto‑asset information exchange, STEP; European Commission notices and secondary coverage

Bits as EU compliance infrastructure play: €12m to unify AML and fraud tooling across borders

Swedish fintech Bits has raised €12 million in a Series A round led by Alstin Capital (with Cherry Ventures, Unusual Ventures, Alliance Ventures and Tre Sweden’s CEO Haval van Drumpt participating) to build a single European platform that unifies onboarding, risk assessment and ongoing monitoring for banks and fintechs under increasing fraud, AML and documentation pressure. By aggregating corporate registers, license data, PEP/sanctions lists and fraud signals into one system and automating much of AML/fraud workflows, Bits claims clients like Qliro have cut manual case handling by 50–70 percent and sped onboarding from weeks to days or hours, positioning the company as a potential core compliance “stack” as the EU rolls out AMLA and a common AML framework.​

Why it matters: This gives financial and venture investors a structural frame: Bits is pitching itself not as a point tool but as shared European compliance infrastructure that could benefit from regulatory convergence (AMLA, EU‑wide AML rules), potentially creating a winner‑takes‑most platform in a market where fragmented, country‑by‑country setups are becoming too slow, costly and risky to maintain.​

Source: Sweden’s Bits secures €12 million for platform tackling fraud and money laundering, Kaupr

Crypto exchanges in the Nordics on the move

Firi from retail leader to institution‑ready MiCA platform

Kaupr reports that Norwegian exchange Firi, already the retail market leader in the Nordics with over 400,000 clients, is strengthening its management team and B2B focus to evolve from a consumer‑oriented app into a more industrial, institution‑ready platform for digital assets under Europe’s MiCA regime. New hires Robert Stephan Eikheim as Chief Revenue Officer and Ted Scheiman to lead digital‑asset and trading services bring deep Nordic banking, payments and fintech experience, building on four years of relatively low‑profile OTC work with wealth managers and professional clients as Firi invests heavily in compliance, custody, internal market making and a MiCA licence to support tokenization, fund structures and more advanced trading products.​

Why it matters: This gives regional and global investors a strategic frame: Firi is trying to leverage its local retail DNA (BankID onboarding, integrated tax tools, local language support) into a compliant, scalable infrastructure partner for Nordic and European institutions at a time when MiCA, AMLA and rising institutional requirements are likely to favour well‑licensed, regionally embedded platforms over thinly regulated, offshore exchanges.​

Source: From retail favourite to industrial player: Firi raises its Nordic crypto ambitions, Kaupr

Bybit’s Nordic push: poaching Safello and K33 talent for a dedicated regional growth team

Kaupr reports that Bybit is stepping up its Nordic expansion by building a dedicated regional growth and relations team under Nordic Market Lead Gustav Buder, bringing in former Safello CMO David Leeb as “Marketing & Growth Leader” and former K33 Head of Sales Jan Platou as Nordic relationship manager focused especially on Norway. The hires, alongside a growing Nordic marketing team, mark a shift from crypto firms mainly recruiting out of traditional finance and corporates to now aggressively poaching experienced crypto operators from competitors, signalling a more mature, competitive regional market for talent and institutional relationships.​

Why it matters: This gives market participants a structural frame: Bybit is treating the Nordics as a strategic, locally contested market where regional branding, relationships and institutional access matter, and the fact that it is hiring directly from Safello and K33 underscores both rising competitive intensity and the emergence of a mobile “crypto professional class” with experience across regulated Nordic platforms.​

Source: Bybit steps up its Nordic expansion – hires Safello and K33 profiles for a new growth team, Kaupr

Mobile and blockchain payments in Europe

Vipps MobilePay’s EU wallet alliance: building a cross‑border account‑to‑account payment layer

Kaupr reports that Vipps MobilePay is joining forces with Bancomat (Italy), Bizum (Spain), SIBS/MB WAY (Portugal) and EPI/Wero (Belgium, France, Germany, etc.) to create a shared network that will route account‑to‑account payments across 13 European countries via a common technical layer and brand, rather than a single “super‑app.” Covering about 130 million users, the alliance targets cross‑border P2P payments by 2026 and then extends to online and in‑store payments from 2027, positioning itself as a step toward a more independent European payments system that relies less on international card networks and global payment providers.​

Why it matters: This gives banks, PSPs and investors a strategic frame: domestic mobile wallets are starting to federate into a de‑facto pan‑European A2A scheme, which could both challenge card rails in everyday payments and create new distribution, data and fee dynamics for incumbents and fintechs as European regulators push for more sovereign, interoperable payment infrastructure.​

Source: Vipps MobilePay and four European mobile wallets build joint payment network, Kaupr

Ripple’s EU push: full Luxembourg EMI licence to anchor regulated blockchain payments

Kaupr reports that Ripple has secured full authorisation as an electronic money institution (EMI) from Luxembourg’s financial regulator CSSF, upgrading an earlier preliminary approval and giving the company a formal EU foothold to issue electronic money and provide regulated payment services across the bloc via its Ripple Payments offering. The licence adds to more than 75 regulatory approvals Ripple says it now holds globally, including recent EMI and crypto‑asset registrations from the UK’s FCA, and is framed by the company as a strategic differentiator versus less‑regulated digital‑asset players when courting banks and institutions looking to modernise payment and treasury infrastructure.​

Why it matters: This gives banks, payment firms and allocators a regulatory frame: Ripple is positioning itself as a heavily licensed, compliance‑first infrastructure partner for blockchain‑based payments in Europe, at a time when rising scrutiny and regimes like MiCA and AMLA are likely to favour counterparties with strong, passportable licences over lightly regulated or offshore providers.​

Source: Ripple secures full e‑money licence in the EU via Luxembourg, Kaupr

What to watch for

One thing to watch is how a Warsh‑led Fed shapes the rate path: if higher‑for‑longer expectations and a firm dollar persist, relief moves in Asian stocks and bitcoin could keep fading below resistance, with BTC trading more as a noisy liquidity barometer than a clean macro hedge.

Why it matters: If recurring macro shocks continue to trigger the same pattern—leveraged and smaller holders de‑risking while ETFs, larger balance sheets and “safer” rails like stablecoins, tokenized Treasuries and A2A payment networks absorb flows—the centre of gravity for digital assets may tilt further toward regulated wrappers and payment infrastructure rather than headline‑driven coin narratives.

Stay with Kaupr Today

Thank you for reading Kaupr Today – feel free to forward this briefing to a colleague or reply with news tips and perspectives from across the Nordic and European digital‑finance ecosystem. Wishing you a great week, and welcome back on Tuesday morning for the next edition of Kaupr Today.​

Best regards
Morten Myrstad
Founder & Editor