Good morning — late today, because we were busy cooking up something new. More on that just below.
Tokenisation moved from pilots to products yesterday: BlackRock strategies sold as tokens, ARK's venture fund onchain, and a US bank settling its card programme in a stablecoin it issues itself. Closer to home, three Nordic companies are building on each other's licences and infrastructure.
💎 BlackRock strategies arrive as tokens through Ondo
💎 ARK puts its OpenAI and Anthropic exposure onchain
💎 SoFi settles a $25 billion card programme in its own stablecoin
💎 NBX signs Tieto for a card that spends stablecoins
💎 Lovable passes $600 million in annualised revenue
📅 New from Kaupr: Kaupr Events, our newsletter for events in onchain finance. First out is our joint event with Virtune on 7 October.
— Morten
New from Kaupr: Kaupr Events
Kaupr has launched Kaupr Events, a short newsletter about events in onchain finance: our own live events, curated picks across the Nordics and Baltics, and full recordings of what you missed. It replaces our Luma calendar as the place our events live.
First up: How to invest in the tokenization trends, a joint event by Kaupr and Virtune on Wednesday 7 October, 11:00–12:30 CET, live online. Christopher Kock, CEO and co-founder of Virtune, and Andreas Severin, Chief Sales Officer, on what is driving tokenization, which platforms the financial industry is building on, and how investors can gain exposure through regulated ETPs. Moderated by Morten Myrstad.
Asset managers put their funds onchain
BlackRock strategies arrive as tokens through Ondo
Ondo launched seven tokenised model portfolios on Thursday, three of them tracking BlackRock strategies: high income, diversified growth and high growth. Each token represents a mix of stock, bond and bitcoin ETFs, and software buys the underlying shares. The products go to investors outside the US first.
Why it matters: Token holders get no shareholder rights, but can trade around the clock and post the tokens as collateral. Model portfolios held $9.8 trillion in June, up from $7.7 trillion a year earlier.
Source: BlackRock to Tokenize Three Investment Portfolios Through Ondo Finance — CryptoProwl via Yahoo Finance
ARK puts its venture fund on Ethereum
ARK Invest is tokenising the ARK Venture Fund through Securitize, first on Ethereum. The fund holds stakes in OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe and Databricks. The companies themselves do not go onchain: investors get a token representing their interest in the fund. Securitize will publish a daily net asset value.
Why it matters: Carlos Domingo says the draw is diversified exposure to private AI companies while the underlying assets stay private. Securitize shares rose as much as 15% on the news.
Source: Cathie Wood's ARK teams with Securitize to tokenize venture fund with OpenAI, Anthropic stakes — CoinDesk
Someone has to build the rails
IBM connects its digital asset platform to Swift's ledger
IBM has connected its Digital Asset Haven platform to Swift's shared ledger. A beta adapter lets banks instruct tokenised deposit transactions using ISO 20022 messages, the format they already use. More than 40 institutions helped design the ledger and 17 are in a tokenised deposit pilot.
Why it matters: Banks reach the ledger through existing payment messages instead of blockchain-specific workflows. Haven can now also run inside a bank's own data centre rather than in the cloud.
Source: IBM connects Digital Asset Haven to Swift blockchain ledger for tokenized deposit transactions — The Block
HIFI raises $37 million for tokenised market infrastructure
HIFI raised $37 million in a Series A led by Left Lane Capital. The New York company sells API infrastructure tying together money movement, compliance and settlement across bank rails and digital assets, and says it processes more than $7 billion a year across 87 countries.
Why it matters: HIFI took part in DTCC's July production trades alongside BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and Nasdaq, and agreed a Visa deal this month for stablecoin-funded payouts.
Source: HIFI raises $37 million Series A to expand tokenized capital markets infrastructure — The Block
A bank settles its cards in its own stablecoin
SoFi moves a $25 billion card programme onto SoFiUSD
SoFi Bank is moving its entire card programme, more than $25 billion in annual volume, to settle in SoFiUSD, a stablecoin the bank issues itself, on Mastercard's network. Merchants still receive ordinary money. It is described as the first nationally chartered US bank to settle retail cards this way.
Why it matters: Settlement in a bank-issued stablecoin shifts the risk question from issuer solvency to bank supervision. The figures come from OneSafe, citing The Paypers.
Source: SoFi's Stablecoin Launch Redefines Crypto Banking — OneSafe
Nordic firms build on each other
NBX signs Tieto for a card that spends stablecoins
NBX has signed a deal with Tieto Banktech for payment cards, so customers can spend stablecoins without selling them and converting to kroner first. It starts with a prepaid Visa card. IDT Finance is BIN sponsor, which gives NBX access to the card networks without its own banking licence.
Why it matters: Stig Aleksander Kjos-Mathisen says the card is built around NBX's own stablecoins rather than sitting on top of one. Credit, and markets such as Germany and Poland, come later.
Source: NBX signs deal with Tieto for stablecoin payment card — Kaupr
Coinmotion hands its large orders to K33
Coinmotion has picked K33 to execute larger institutional orders. The Finnish broker, which also serves Sweden, keeps the client relationship and the platform, while K33 supplies the trading capacity. Both are licensed under the EU rulebook, and K33 is targeting regulated institutions across Europe.
Why it matters: Torbjørn Bull Jenssen says a common rulebook is what makes such partnerships workable, so specialised firms no longer need every capability in-house.
Safello lets other companies sell crypto on its licence
Safello is piloting crypto checkout, which lets companies without their own licence offer crypto purchases inside their own services through Safello's API. The buyer becomes a Safello customer along the way. The first pilot runs in Sweden with one external partner and on bitcoin.se, which Safello owns.
Why it matters: Frank Schuil points to customer acquisition cost, citing a 2018 widget that produced the fastest growth in the company's history. The pilot measures volumes and conversion before any wider rollout.
Lovable passes $600 million
Two thirds of the Fortune 500 now use the Swedish platform
Lovable's annualised revenue has passed $600 million, up from around $500 million in June, co-founder Fabian Hedin said at HumanX in Amsterdam. Two thirds of Fortune 500 companies use the product, among them Microsoft, NVIDIA and Deutsche Telekom. Apps built on the platform draw close to a billion visits a month.
Why it matters: Hedin says the output is a product rather than code, with hosting, deployment and scaling included. The company has raised more than $700 million in eight months, most recently at a $13.3 billion valuation.
Source: Lovable's annualized revenue crosses $600M as vibe coding takes off — TechCrunch
Explore Kaupr Today
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Wishing you a great weekend. If you also subscribe to Kaupr Digest, it lands on Sunday with a new episode of the Kaupr Weekly podcast — and Kaupr Daily is back on Monday morning.
Best regards Morten Myrstad Founder & Editor