Kaupr Digest — Sunday, 26 July, 2026
Whether you read every Daily this week, only a few, or none at all — here's the shape of the week, seen from a distance.
In this week's Digest:
💎 The world writes the crypto rulebook while the US argues with itself
💎 The digital asset treasury model finally breaks
💎 MiCA is not over until it's over — the Goobit saga
💎 Watch: Fati Hakim on blockchain beyond crypto
💎 Kaupr launches Onchain Pages, and capital keeps flowing despite the slowdown
Morten
The world writes the crypto rulebook while the US argues with itself
Six governments and financial giants moved on crypto this week — some writing new rules, some enforcing old ones, some just buying their way in. Washington did neither.
Japan's SBI Group bought its way into Singapore, while Hong Kong approved its first "digitally native" tokenized fund — the blockchain itself, not a paper record, as legal proof of ownership.
Brazil's securities regulator gave itself 60 days to write tokenization rules. Russia's parliament took its final votes on a law letting companies pay each other in crypto across borders — a channel around Western sanctions.
Kazakhstan built a legal pipeline that takes 10% of what its bitcoin miners dig up, straight into a state reserve. South Korea's Mirae Asset, a $1 trillion financial group, completed its takeover of Korbit — the country's oldest crypto exchange.
And the CLARITY Act, the US bill meant to give crypto companies clear rules? Real movement this week — a White House ethics deal, new Senate text, even Goldman Sachs breaking with JPMorgan to back it. But the Senate's own majority leader still expects to miss the deadline.
Six countries and financial groups moved without asking anyone's permission. The country with the deepest crypto markets is still negotiating with itself.
The digital asset treasury model finally breaks
For a year, a handful of public companies made buying bitcoin (or ether) their entire business model. This week, the math stopped working — in three different ways.
Strategy — the company that invented the model — saw its enterprise mNAV (everything it owes, divided by what its bitcoin is worth) fall below 1.0 for the first time. The "Saylor premium" is gone.
BitMine hit the brakes instead: $86 million spent buying back its own stock last week, rather than more ether — one of its smallest ETH purchases since it started.
Satsuma Technology, in London, didn't slow down. It stopped. Over 90% of shareholders voted to sell the entire bitcoin holding and delist.
Three companies, three different answers to the same question: what do you do when the premium disappears?
🎥 Watch: Fati Hakim on blockchain beyond crypto
A conversation from Kaupr TV.
Fati Hakim founded the consultancy FirstBlock in 2022, after moving from Austria to Sweden. Her argument: the Nordic conversation about blockchain stops at cryptocurrency — and the companies already using it for traceability, identity and verification rarely get any attention.
Fati Hakim (right), video interviewed by Morten Myrstad, Kaupr.
Why now? As AI models consume more data, who owns it — and whether it can be verified — becomes the harder question. Blockchain, she argues, is the trust layer underneath that.
The event: FirstBlock-athon, the first blockathon in the Nordics, runs in Stockholm September 7–11. Problems come from real business challenges, and no coding background is required.
Read the full story (English, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian): Blockchain can solve problems far beyond finance
MiCA is not over until it's over
Getting rejected under MiCA isn't the end of the story — Goobit, the mother company of the Swedish exchange BTCX, has spent three weeks proving exactly that.
July 2: Finansinspektionen rejects Goobit's MiCA application. CEO Christian Ander says the company is evaluating its options, including an appeal.
July 3: Kaupr's sources confirm the practical reality — BTCX must wind down, with operations already minimal for some time before the rejection.
July 6: Finansinspektionen confirms the specific reasoning to Kaupr: deficient internal control and gaps in its money-laundering risk assessment.
July 8: CEO Christian Ander calls it a major disappointment after two years of preparation — and says he's weighing an appeal, a fresh application, winding down, or even applying in Norway instead.
July 13: The critical date emerges: transitional rules let Goobit keep operating until July 23, and an appeal could extend that further while a court reviews the case.
July 21: Goobit adds three new full-time roles — a Chief Compliance Officer, an MLRO and a Risk Manager — and starts preparing a formal response to the regulator's findings.
July 24: Goobit files that formal appeal, arguing FI never properly assessed its business individually. Under Swedish rules, it can keep operating while the appeal is reviewed.
A rejection isn't always the final word — but three weeks of appeals, new hires and legal maneuvering show just how much work "not the final word" actually takes.
Also this week
Kaupr launches Onchain Pages. A new directory of ~30 companies moving onchain — from exchanges to banks like DNB and Visa — with more added continuously. Explore Onchain Pages →
Citadel writes Crypto com its first-ever institutional check. $400M, and the exchange's first outside funding since 2016.
Coinbase Ventures leads all crypto VC activity in H1. 30 deals, well ahead of anyone else — while overall crypto fundraising sits near its lowest since 2020.
Nine institutions form a Bitcoin Security Consortium. BlackRock, Coinbase and Strategy among them, funding quantum-defense research.
Lombard launches the first regulated Bitcoin-backed credit line. Flow Traders is the pilot borrower.
84% of financial firms now call tokenization a strategic priority. That's the finding from a fresh Broadridge survey of 200 executives.
Alpaca raises $135M for the unglamorous side of tokenized stocks. Custody, dividends, corporate actions — the parts that still need a regulated firm behind them.
Tokenized equity perpetuals hit $470 billion in monthly volume. Up more than fivefold since January — though concentrated on three exchanges, some without KYC.
Two ways to read Kaupr Today
Kaupr Daily is the short weekday briefing you already know — markets, regulation, tokenization and stablecoin stories that matter — no noise, just what you need to stay ahead. It lands in your inbox Monday through Friday.
Kaupr Digest is this: once a week, we step back from the daily flow and look at the pattern underneath it. Most editions also carry the latest episode of Kaupr Weekly, our short podcast.
Not a subscriber yet, or want to fine-tune what you receive?
Discover Kaupr Today, Kaupr Daily or Kaupr Digest for free.
Subscribe to Kaupr Today, Kaupr Daily, or Kaupr Digest for free.
If you want to manage your subscriptions, make sure to log in first. Then you can manage your subscriptions in your preference center, anytime.
Explore Kaupr Today
Kaupr Today also has its own home — read, listen, watch and explore at today.kaupr.io.
Thank you for reading our newsletters!
Wishing you a great Sunday. Daily subscribers, welcome back tomorrow morning — and everyone, welcome back for a new Kaupr Digest next weekend.
Best regards, Morten Myrstad Founder & Editor