Podcast: Convergence · Samsung, Nasdaq, OpenAI — Sun 11 Oct

Good evening!

Crypto moved closer to the rest of finance this week. Stablecoins were built into business software, card programmes and phone wallets, while DNB argued in Oslo that they will not go mainstream. Tokenised stocks headed for the exchanges, and Nasdaq and the IMF weighed in on the same day.

Rising yields caught up with the AI trade and bitcoin; demand for crypto came from wealthy investors, listed companies and Korean retail, and AI agents found a business model in payments. Five threads ran through the week's Daily editions; here they are in one read, whether you followed every day or none.

That convergence is also the theme of this week's Kaupr Weekly: ten movements bringing onchain and traditional finance together, in twelve minutes.

— Morten

🎧 New on Kaupr Weekly — Episode 13: Convergence: Ten Movements Reshaping Onchain Finance

Is crypto finally merging with the rest of finance? In twelve minutes, Morten Myrstad walks through ten movements that are closing the gap, from bitcoin as an accepted asset for wealthy investors to tokenised stocks, stablecoin payments, banks' choice between stablecoins and tokenised deposits, and computing power as an economic asset.

👉 Listen to Episode 13 → · Spotify · Apple Podcasts

The debate came to Oslo. At Visa's first Norwegian stablecoin summit, DNB's Ole Morten Sunde said stablecoins will not go mainstream, as banks see tokenised deposits doing the same job. NBX was all in, and Nets didn't mind. Our full report from the summit is in Onchain Growth.

Businesses are already paying with them. Business cards account for about 17% of the volume on Visa's stablecoin-linked cards, and businesses are the recipient in most stablecoin payments, according to data firm Allium. Circle is bringing USDC and EURC into SAP Pay, so companies can pay invoices in stablecoins without leaving SAP's cloud ERP.

Consumers get them in apps they already have. Stripe plans to offer stablecoin cards in more than 100 countries by year-end. Samsung Wallet will let US Galaxy users send USDC across borders from late October, and Polygon has connected Tron's USDT to US bank accounts through a single integration.

The rules are still being written. In the review of MiCA, ESMA, Circle, Aave and more than 50,000 Europeans disagree on whether stablecoin holders may earn rewards and how reserves should be held. Eleven firms formed a consortium to get the euro stablecoin EURØP into use, and Kazakhstan's central bank will explore a tenge stablecoin with Tether.

Whether stablecoins go mainstream was debated in Oslo. The same week, they were built into invoicing software, card programmes and a phone wallet on millions of devices.

Exchanges filed to trade them. OKXICE, a venture between OKX and NYSE owner ICE, has filed with the SEC to trade tokenised shares of 63 NYSE-listed companies around the clock, with the same dividends and voting rights as the shares. Securitize launched tokenised Apple, Nvidia and Tesla shares on Solana and expects them to trade on NYSE's planned round-the-clock platform.

Settlement is the prize. Nasdaq's Adena Friedman says billions of dollars are stuck in clearing and settlement as collateral, and tokenisation could free them. Nasdaq has asked the SEC to allow tokenised settlement on its main market. The Solana Foundation launched a tool where asset and payment settle together or not at all, with J.P. Morgan advising on settlement practice.

The conditions were spelled out. The IMF says tokenisation only delivers with legal certainty, platforms that work together and settlement in safe money, and warns that today's slower processes act as buffers. Cardano's new standard lets issuers control who can hold a token, and Veridian became the first company to tokenise its own shares on it.

Tokenised stocks are moving from crypto platforms towards the exchanges where shares trade today. The open questions are now about law and settlement more than technology.

Tokenisation was also the topic of Wednesday's webinar with Virtune. Watch the recording on Kaupr Events →

Yields and the dollar climbed. On Monday the Nasdaq hit a record while the 10-year US Treasury yield rose to 5.31%, and the dollar reached an 18-month high. Bitcoin held around $86,000, although a strong dollar and high yields usually work against risk assets, CoinDesk noted.

The voices split. Ray Dalio said the AI bubble is approaching the point where it could burst, pushed by rising rates and heavy borrowing for AI infrastructure. Arthur Hayes expects an AI data centre crash and bailout to lift bitcoin. Bitmine's Tom Lee said a major crypto bull market is underway.

The numbers came in lower. OpenAI told investors its annualised revenue is approaching $50 billion, about $20 billion below what Axios reported in September. Wall Street listings have slowed since SpaceX's IPO in June, with several companies postponing or pulling deals.

Bitcoin gave way. On Thursday bitcoin fell towards $80,000 as more than $1 billion in leveraged positions were wiped out, almost all of them bets on rising prices. The sources point to oil prices, high yields and outflows from crypto ETFs.

Rising borrowing costs ran through most of the week's market stories, from Dalio's warning to Thursday's fall in bitcoin.

The wealthy are already in. CoinShares surveyed affluent investors in seven markets and found that two in three hold crypto, while only 13% of financial advisers actively recommend it. Affluent Swedes were the most sceptical in the survey.

Companies keep buying. Four listed companies added 3,342 BTC in a week. Oslo-listed Ace Digital grew its bitcoin holding through options without buying any, and Bitmine holds nearly 6 million ETH, close to its target of 5% of supply.

Korean retail leads Asia. South Korea's crypto economy reached $449 billion in the year to June, the largest in East Asia, according to Chainalysis. Retail investors drove the growth, and AI-related tokens were the largest theme in won-denominated trading.

Demand came from three directions this week: wealthy investors, listed treasury companies and Korean retail. Advisers remain the most hesitant link.

Agents build. Supabase says 70% of new databases on its platform are created by agents or AI tools. It raised $150 million and is buying Turso, which provides low-cost databases for agent workloads.

Agents pay. Wajo's agent can call businesses, hire a human and pay with a virtual card that hides the user's details. Underdog, an assistant that runs on the user's own computer, will take a small share of the payments it makes on Stripe's rails instead of selling ads. Mastercard will resell Rezolve Ai's AI commerce tools to merchants, and SAP wants its Joule agents to initiate payments.

Finance may have to adapt. Citrini Research asks what happens when millions of agents move deposits to the highest bidder, and whether banks could lose the cheap funding they rely on. It argues that agents need programmable, always-on money, which blockchains already provide.

Payments are becoming both what AI agents do and how some of them make money.

Swedish-Norwegian Done launched buy now, pay later for business invoices inside the Finago accounting system, starting in Norway.

Swedish Hilbert Group opened its Enigma trading strategy to outside investors through a fund that takes subscriptions onchain.

S&P Global Ratings launched risk assessments for DeFi lending vaults, which pool deposits and lend them out like fixed income funds.

Circle, Ripple and Standard Chartered invested in OKX at a $25 billion valuation, as the exchange moves into payments and tokenised assets.

Tether's USDT is returning to bitcoin, with issuance expected to begin this month.

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Thank you for reading Kaupr Digest. Wishing you a good evening — Kaupr Daily is back on Monday morning.

Best regards Morten Myrstad Founder & Editor