Good morning and welcome to Kaupr Today!

Bitcoin is down. Search interest is at record lows. By every traditional measure, this looks like a bear market. But the crypto narrative is changing — and most people haven't noticed yet.

The narratives that defined crypto for a decade are being replaced. Not by crisis, but by maturity. Capital is no longer moving in lockstep with Bitcoin. AI tokens are building infrastructure for a machine-speed economy. Privacy coins are attracting institutional capital for the first time. Neobanks are embedding web3 rails directly into their financial stacks.

This is not a bear market story. It's a coming-of-age story.

Stories in today's newsletter:

♦️ Crypto search interest below bear market lows — the old framework is broken.
♦️ "Crypto stopped needing Bitcoin" — and that might be the most bullish thing
♦️ Three experts name the same three winners: perps, AI, and privacy.
♦️ Hyperliquid becomes Wall Street's after-hours trading venue.
♦️ NEAR builds a blockchain that scales itself. Bittensor catches Huang's attention.
♦️ DCG's Silbert: 5-10% of Bitcoin capital will rotate to privacy coins.
♦️ Fintech hits $500 billion — neobanks and digital assets are the new growth engines. ♦️ Kaupr breaking: Danish Penning acquires Lithuanian Veli

Have a great read!

Morten

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Google Trends shows global crypto search interest at 26-32 out of 100 — down 70 points from the August 2025 peak and below levels seen when Bitcoin traded at $16,000. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index hit 5 in February, matching the all-time low from the Terra-LUNA collapse. The explanation is structural: institutional flows have replaced retail attention as the dominant price driver, and retail has rotated toward AI stocks. The historical correlation between search interest and Bitcoin price — reliable from 2017 to 2021 — has broken.

Why it matters: Retail attention is no longer the engine. Institutional flows, ETF data, and corporate treasury decisions are. Analysts still using the old framework are reading the wrong signals.

Source: Why crypto search interest hit a one-year low in 2026 — crypto.news

In a widely shared essay on X, analyst Nik Shep argues Bitcoin's drop is being misread. AI took its role as the market's asymmetric risk bet — infrastructure spending heads toward $700–830 billion this year. Stablecoins took its reserve role — annual volume crossed $30 trillion, and the on-ramp is now fiat → USDC → anything. What remains is a maturing dollar-denominated economy with real businesses: Hyperliquid did $2.6 trillion in volume last year, more than Coinbase. Polymarket runs a $365 million fee run-rate at a $20 billion valuation.

Why it matters: If Bitcoin's reserve and risk roles have genuinely moved on, the instruments you watch to read crypto's health have changed too.

Source: "The Year Crypto Stopped Needing Bitcoin" — @nikshepsvn on X

As Bitcoin fell below $66,000 this week, Bankless co-founder David Hoffman, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan, and Anchorage head of research David Lawant independently reached the same conclusion: this is not a generalised crypto bear market. Privacy coins rose 8% as a category. Hyperliquid flipped Dogecoin into the top 10. NEAR surged 12% while the broader AI token category fell 3.8%. Lawant: "Mature asset classes price idiosyncratically most of the time. Crypto is finally trading like it."

Why it matters: Three credible institutional voices naming the same three sectors simultaneously is a signal. When capital rotates on fundamentals rather than Bitcoin sentiment, the map of winners is being redrawn.

Source: 'Bear market for crypto, bull market for perps, AI, and privacy' — Stocktwits / TradingView

Traditional finance traders are using Hyperliquid to trade perpetual futures on Bitcoin, the S&P 500, crude oil, and pre-IPO companies including SpaceX — during hours when regulated markets are closed. When Trump announced airstrikes on Iran on a Saturday in February, hedge fund trader Vala Zeinali closed oil positions on Hyperliquid for a gain of up to 243%. Cumulative SpaceX-linked perpetual volume has reached $280 million. The platform generated approximately $8 billion in revenue last year. Hyperliquid currently blocks US users, but the CFTC's new perps framework may change that.

Why it matters: Hyperliquid is becoming the venue where global markets get priced when regulated exchanges are dark. That is a structural challenge to incumbent exchanges, not just a crypto story.

Source: Hyperliquid becomes the default venue for Wall Street's weekend derivatives trading — Blockhead

NEAR Protocol will introduce dynamic resharding in June, allowing the network to automatically add shards as demand grows — no validator coordination required. The upgrade is designed for an AI-driven onchain economy where bots transact at machine speed. NEAR is also adding post-quantum-safe signing. The Bitwise NEAR Staking ETP pulled in $7 million in a single week ahead of the announcement.

Why it matters: Most blockchains scale through human-coordinated upgrades. NEAR is building infrastructure that scales itself — a meaningful technical edge for any network serving AI agents at high frequency.

Source: Near Protocol to automate its own growth and its token is skyrocketing — CoinDesk

Bittensor (TAO) is up 15% year to date with a $2.8 billion market cap — the leading decentralised AI cryptocurrency. Its specialised subnets for AI tasks including LLM training caught the attention of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Supply is capped at 21 million, identical to Bitcoin. Two catalysts could push it mainstream: flipping Shiba Inu to enter the top 25, and the potential launch of spot Bittensor ETFs following Hyperliquid ETFs that pulled in $70 million in their first sessions.

Why it matters: Decentralised AI infrastructure is attracting serious institutional attention. Bittensor represents the clearest bet on an open, token-incentivised alternative to Big Tech's closed AI systems.

Source: Is Bittensor (TAO) the Next Crypto to Go Mainstream? — Motley Fool

Digital Currency Group CEO Barry Silbert predicted at Bitcoin Investor Week in New York that 5-10% of Bitcoin holdings will migrate to privacy coins over the coming years, singling out Zcash as capable of 500x returns. He acknowledged that Bitcoin's original anonymous cash narrative has been undermined by blockchain analytics firms, and expressed doubt Bitcoin will ever add privacy features. Grayscale operates the Grayscale Zcash Trust and is seeking to convert it into a spot ETF.

Why it matters: When the founder of Grayscale publicly shifts focus to privacy coins and calls financial confidentiality his "current passion," it signals a meaningful reallocation of institutional attention — and potentially capital.

Source: DCG's Silbert predicts 5-10% of Bitcoin capital rotates to privacy coins — CoinMarketCap Academy

Global fintech revenues exceeded $500 billion in 2025, growing 22% — more than four times faster than traditional banks — per the BCG and FT Partners Global Fintech Report 2026. Average EBITDA margins hit 20%, with 74% of major public fintech firms profitable. Neobanks are expanding beyond payments into lending, wealth management, and cross-border payments. Digital assets drove M&A activity, with fintech firms completing 659 acquisitions in 2025 — outpacing banks for the first time outside of 2023.

Why it matters: Fintech is no longer a challenger story — it is a profitability story. The shift toward digital assets and full-stack financial platforms is structural, and accelerating.

Source: Neobanks and digital assets emerge as fintech's next growth engines: report — crypto.news

Revolut has confirmed its planned US bank will offer stablecoin access alongside FDIC-insured accounts and multi-currency deposits in over 30 currencies. Revolut filed for a national bank charter with the OCC in March — one of 14 de novo applications in 2025, nearly matching the total from the previous four years combined. The US bank is expected to begin operations in 2027 from Stamford, Connecticut.

Why it matters: Neobanks pursuing bank charters are no longer doing it for compliance alone — they are building the full financial stack, stablecoins included. Revolut is the largest European neobank. The template it sets will be followed.

Source: Revolut wants to issue its own stablecoin — so will every other neobank — Forbes

Penning, one of Denmark's first MiCA-licensed crypto firms, has acquired the wealth management business of Lithuanian Veli, launching Penning Wealth as a structured investment arm for long-term crypto investors. The deal includes Veli's client base and a perpetual licence to its platform technology. Penning Wealth adds conservative bitcoin-anchored portfolios and balanced indices of the ten largest cryptocurrencies, including a platform for financial advisers. The transfer completes by end of June — just before Veli's Bulgarian VASP registration expires on 1 July — making Penning's MiCA authorisation the regulatory home for the combined client base across the EU and EEA.

Why it matters: This is a Nordic-Baltic consolidation story driven directly by MiCA's regulatory deadline. A Danish MiCA licence absorbing a Lithuanian and Bulgarian client base — with EU passport access — is exactly the kind of cross-border restructuring MiCA was designed to enable.

Source: Danish Penning acquires Lithuanian wealth manager — Kaupr

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A new episode drops each weekend — four episodes so far. Kaupr Weekly is Morten Myrstad's short, news-oriented podcast on the week's biggest stories in crypto and fintech.

Thank you for reading Kaupr Today. If you find this briefing useful, please share it with a colleague or friend who should be following Nordic and European digital‑finance news more closely.

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Wishing you a great Thursday — and welcome back tomorrow morning for the next edition of Kaupr Today.

Best regards Morten Myrstad Founder & Editor