Firi into Sweden, S&P backs Kaiko, Clarity vote today — Tue 15 Sep

Good morning. The retail market is emptying out while the institutional one gets built. Both are happening in the same 24 hours, and a Senate vote and three central bank meetings sit around them.

💎 Bybit puts retail participation 30 per cent below peak
💎 Bitcoin Suisse cuts half its Swiss staff and closes its Copenhagen office
💎 S&P Global leads a $110 million round in Kaiko
💎 Coinbase wires a thousand US community banks for stablecoin payments
💎 Ripple goes after $13 trillion in corporate treasuries

Onchain Growth is out this morning on who gets to sell crypto in the Nordics.

— Morten

Firi opens its app to Swedish customers today, with BankID, Swish and deposits in kronor. It is the first market the Norwegian exchange has entered on its own MiCA licence.

Goobit went the other way. Two announcements landed ten minutes apart on Monday evening, both as inside information: a rights issue of SEK 25.1 million, and a savings platform built on somebody else's authorisation. Finansinspektionen refused the company's own MiCA application in July.

The company supplying that authorisation is Finnish, and it sells the arrangement as a finished product. Kvarn X Embedded is marketed as crypto-as-a-service: the partner builds the interface and owns the customer commercially, while Kvarn executes, holds the assets and carries the licence. What Goobit lacks is not capability. It is permission.

This week's edition also has the tax minister meeting the industry inside the Danish parliament on Thursday, the Stockholm round table on what it would take to run tokenised securities in production by 2027, and the four women behind U-proof who won Blockathon Stockholm.

👉 Firi into Sweden. Goobit borrows a Finnish licence. Denmark talks tax. — Onchain Growth by Kaupr

Bond yields sit at multi-year highs before three central banks meet

German ten-year yields are at their highest since 2011, after a fifth straight weekly rise. Markets price an 86 per cent chance the Federal Reserve raises rates on Wednesday. The Bank of Japan and Bank of England follow. Brent added another three per cent to trade near $112.

Why it matters: Every policy meeting this week is now about energy-driven inflation rather than growth, which is the setup that takes rate cuts off the table entirely.

Source: Euro yields hold at multi-year peaks as crude surge precedes c.bank decisions — Investing.com

Banks ask the Senate to close what they call a loophole on stablecoin rewards

Eight banking trade groups wrote to Senate leaders on Monday, a day before the procedural vote. They want the bill to catch any reward that resembles deposit interest, including payments tied to how much a customer holds or for how long. They also reject the proposed circuit breaker: a safeguard that triggers after deposits have left is no safeguard.

Why it matters: The fight is no longer about whether stablecoins get rules, but about whether they are allowed to compete with a bank account on return.

Source: Banks want more: trade groups demand stricter stablecoin limits in Clarity Act — Decrypt

Bybit's chief puts retail participation 30 per cent below its peak

Ben Zhou estimates retail activity across the market sits roughly 30 per cent under previous highs, and attributes it to a market with no new narrative to chase. Centralised spot volumes are around 67 per cent below the October 2025 peak. The exchange is pushing towards institutional clients and pursuing EMI and MiFID licences in Europe.

Why it matters: Thinner retail flow means thinner order books and less fee revenue for every exchange, which is why the ones with capital are buying their way into regulated markets.

Source: Bybit CEO says crypto retail participation may have fallen 30% — Crypto Briefing

Bitcoin Suisse cuts half its Swiss staff and closes its Copenhagen office

The Zug company is removing up to 60 of its 120 Swiss positions, moving back-office, administrative and development roles to Bratislava and a new office in Vietnam. Its IT development office in Copenhagen closes. Chief executive Andrej Majcen frames it as international expansion rather than a response to market conditions. Client-facing roles and the Zug headquarters stay.

Why it matters: One of the original Crypto Valley firms has concluded that being Swiss is worth paying for at the front of the business and not at the back.

Source: Bitcoin Suisse to cut up to half its Swiss jobs in overseas shift — Crypto Briefing

Coinbase puts stablecoin rails inside a thousand community banks

Coinbase is partnering with Moov, which supplies payments infrastructure to more than 1,000 US community banks and credit unions. The banks get stablecoin acceptance, settlement and real-time funding built into the core systems they already run. Coinbase provides the regulated custody and payment infrastructure underneath. The institutions keep the customer relationship.

Why it matters: Small banks have been the loudest voice against stablecoins in Washington, and the pitch here is that they can hold the customer instead of losing them.

Source: Coinbase brings stablecoin payments and custody to community banks and credit unions — Coinbase

Ripple goes after the corporate treasury, and wants RLUSD in Europe

Jack McDonald says the opportunity sits in Ripple Treasury, the business built on last year's $1 billion purchase of GTreasury. Its roughly 1,200 corporate treasury customers move around $13 trillion a year, none of it onchain. RLUSD supply has passed $2.4 billion. Ripple wants to bring it to Europe through a MiCA-compliant dual-issuance structure, using its Luxembourg authorisation.

Why it matters: Corporate treasurers move money on a schedule and in size, which is a different demand curve from anything stablecoins have been built around so far.

Source: Ripple stablecoin chief sees $13 trillion corporate treasury opportunity for RLUSD — CoinDesk

S&P Global leads a $110 million round in Kaiko

The crypto market data provider raised from an investor group that is mostly traditional finance: Nasdaq, Royal Bank of Canada, BNP Paribas, Broadridge, DRW and Susquehanna, alongside Bpifrance, Coinbase Ventures and Stellar. Kaiko sells data and analytics to institutional clients, and says the money goes towards new products.

Why it matters: An index provider leading the round says the buyers of this data are the firms that build benchmarks, not the firms that trade on them.

Source: Kaiko raises $110M led by S&P Global to expand crypto market data services — Dealroom

Kraken lets clients lend out their tokenised stocks

Holders of SPYx, QQQx and NVDAx can now put them into vaults that earn yield from onchain lending protocols, paid in kind. The vaults run on the same infrastructure as Kraken DeFi Earn, which has passed $800 million in deposits since January. Available in the EEA, not in the US or UK. (Source: press release)

Why it matters: A tokenised share that can be lent out onchain earns something its exchange-traded equivalent cannot, which is the first real argument for the wrapper.

Source: Kraken clients can now earn onchain yield on xStocks — Business Wire

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

Best regards Morten Myrstad Founder & Editor