Welcome to Kaupr Today

Good morning – and welcome to your weekday briefing at the intersection of bitcoin, policy and Nordic digital finance. Today’s edition tracks a tariff‑driven risk‑off move in crypto, record‑high gold and silver, Davos’ agenda on tokenization and stablecoins, China’s mBridge CBDC rails, Denmark’s MiCA‑licensed crypto asset‑management platform Penning out of Copenhagen, and a growing investor push into privacy‑focused coins like Zcash and Monero. This is your quick, curated daily window into the Nordic future of finance and the internet.

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Welcome!
Morten

Markets & makro risks

Crypto majors slide as tariff fears send traders risk‑off

Major cryptocurrencies fell around 3–6% as markets reacted to renewed tariff threats from U.S. President Donald Trump over Greenland, triggering a broader risk‑off move across equities and high‑beta assets while bitcoin dipped into the low‑92,000 range. Derivatives data point to hundreds of millions of dollars in liquidations across BTC, ETH and SOL as traders unwound leveraged longs into the spike in geopolitical and trade uncertainty.​

Why it matters: This tariff‑driven risk‑off episode is a live test of how quickly crypto liquidity can evaporate when macro and trade shocks hit, a pattern Nordic treasurers and allocators will watch closely when sizing crypto exposure versus equities and commodities.​

Source: Bitcoin slips on trade war fears, sparks liquidations, AInvest 

Gold and silver jump to record highs on Greenland tariff threats

Economic Times and others report that gold and silver have surged to fresh record highs after Trump’s threat of tariffs over Greenland, with spot gold near 4,670 dollars per ounce and silver above 93 dollars as investors rushed into classic safe‑havens. The rally comes alongside falling U.S. stock futures and a softer dollar, underscoring how quickly trade tensions can reprice cross‑asset risk and push institutional allocators back toward hard‑asset hedges.​

Why it matters: For Nordic treasurers and asset managers, record‑high gold and silver prices set a powerful reference point when evaluating bitcoin’s role as “digital gold” versus traditional precious‑metal reserves and broader inflation‑hedge strategies.​

Source: Gold, silver jump to record highs on Trump tariff threats over Greenland, Economic Times

Digital assets and payments

Davos 2026: from ‘if’ to ‘how’ on tokenization and stablecoins

A Finance Magnates report from Davos notes that digital‑asset discussions have shifted from questioning crypto’s long‑term viability to practical debates about integration into traditional finance, with official sessions titled “Is Tokenization the Future?” and “Where Are We on Stablecoins?”. Tokenization panels now focus on scaling real‑world‑asset deployments and market infrastructure, while stablecoin debates centre on cross‑border payments, treasury operations and settlement, supported by frameworks like the EU’s MiCA regime and the U.S. GENIUS Act.​

Why it matters: For Nordic institutions monitoring Davos as a policy and strategy weathervane, the move from ideology to implementation is a clear signal that tokenization and stablecoins are being treated as technologies to test inside existing financial architecture rather than parallel systems at the fringes.​

Source: Davos 2026: Crypto debate shifts from ‘if’ to ‘how’ as tokenization and stablecoins take center stage, Finance Magnates

WEF: 2026 as a breakthrough year for digital assets

Reporting from Davos, the World Economic Forum’s digital‑asset brief frames 2026 as the year blockchain moves from pilots to core market infrastructure, driven by clearer regulation, enterprise‑grade deployments and better interoperability across networks. The piece highlights surging stablecoin transaction volumes (around 24 trillion dollars in 2024), the shift from trading‑only usage toward payments and settlement, and a new wave of tokenization efforts by traditional finance, from BlackRock‑backed funds to on‑chain bonds and real‑world assets.​

Why it matters: For Nordic banks, asset managers and fintechs, the WEF’s roadmap confirms that digital assets, stablecoins and tokenized instruments are now a mainstream infrastructure question, not a side bet – raising the bar on strategy, regulation and execution ahead of 2027.​

Source: Why 2026 could be the breakthrough year for digital assets and blockchain finance, Business Today / World Economic Forum.

China‑led mBridge CBDC platform tops $55.5 billion in cross‑border payments

Project mBridge, the China‑led multi‑CBDC platform, has now processed more than 4,000 cross‑border transactions with a cumulative value of around 55.5 billion dollars, representing roughly a 2,500‑fold increase in volume since its early 2022 pilots. The experimental payment rail, currently tested by central banks in mainland China, Hong Kong, Thailand, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, is dominated by the digital yuan, which accounts for an estimated 95% of settlement volume and sits alongside a domestic e‑CNY network that has already handled over 2.4 trillion dollars in transactions.​

Why it matters: For Nordic policymakers and banks thinking about cross‑border settlement, mBridge is a concrete example of how CBDC‑based rails can scale quietly in parallel to SWIFT and dollar‑centric systems, raising strategic questions about interoperability, standards and how European projects like the digital euro and Project Agorá will respond.​

Source:China‑led cross‑border digital currency platform sees surge, Reuter

Policy and regulations

Coinbase turns against major U.S. crypto bill

A CoinDesk‑linked explainer details how Coinbase and several other firms withdrew support for a landmark U.S. crypto market‑structure bill after seeing late‑stage changes to its Senate Banking draft, contributing to yet another postponement of the markup. Industry concerns centre on provisions that could tighten SEC jurisdiction over DeFi, restrict stablecoin yield, constrain tokenized securities and even risk pushing some blockchains toward permissioned models, with critics arguing they would prefer no bill over a “bad” one.​​

Why it matters: For Nordic and European players watching Washington as a regulatory bellwether, the episode underlines how U.S. rules on DeFi, tokenization and stablecoin yield could swing from enabling to constraining, with direct implications for cross‑border products and listings used by Nordic clients.​

Source: Crypto market structure bill further delayed to January end, Yahoo Finance

​Danish Penning secures MiCA license

Copenhagen‑based Penning has received a MiCA license as a crypto‑asset service provider from the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority, becoming the first Nordic platform to combine regulated crypto trading with Finansinspektion‑approved portfolio management in one setup. The license covers seven core services, including custody, trading and Penning Invest’s three discretionary strategies (Save, Grow and Trade), and gives Penning passporting rights across the EEA as it plans expansion into Sweden and Norway in the first half of 2026, followed by Germany and the Netherlands.​

Why it matters: For Nordic banks, wealth managers and fintechs, Penning’s approval is an early blueprint for “institutional‑level” MiCA‑compliant infrastructure that can support both direct client trading and outsourced crypto portfolio management within familiar regulatory and investor‑protection frameworks.​

Source: Danish Penning obtains a MiCA license for trading and management of crypto, Kaupr​

Privacy and the next cycle

Privacy crypto emerges as a potential 2026 winner

A new Kaupr analysis highlights how privacy‑focused coins like Zcash and Monero outperformed much of the market in 2025, helped by concerns over on‑chain surveillance and the growing ability of AI‑driven tools to link blockchain addresses to real‑world identities. The piece argues that looming EU rules such as AMLR and DAC8, plus rising data‑capture and reporting requirements, are pushing some investors to position early in privacy assets while access on major exchanges remains open.

Why it matters: For investors and platforms, privacy crypto sits at the intersection of regulatory risk and user demand, forcing a strategic choice between fully transparent rails and more shielded solutions that still aim to stay within supervisory frameworks.

Source: Privacy crypto could be the winners in 2026 Kaupr

What to watch out for

Watch whether the “flight to safety” into record‑high gold and strong silver continues as U.S. and European sessions unfold, and how far that risk‑off tone spills over into crypto prices and liquidity. Also pay attention to this week’s Davos agenda on tokenization, stablecoins and digital‑asset infrastructure, alongside U.S. market‑structure and stablecoin yield discussions, as these signals will shape expectations for how fast digital‑asset integration can move through the rest of Q1.​

Why it matters: Together, these macro, policy and infrastructure signals will influence how Nordic treasurers, asset managers and fintechs calibrate their mix of gold, crypto, CBDCs and tokenized instruments as part of their 2026–2027 reserve and product strategies.​

Keep updated with Kaupr newsletters

Thank you for reading – and feel free to forward this briefing to a colleague or reply with story tips, launches and people from across the Nordic digital‑finance ecosystem. For a broader, more thematic take on early‑2026 investor and institutional signals, you can also read the new Future of Finance Digest edition on LinkedIn: Investor and institutional signals at the start of 2026.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s edition of Kaupr Today in your inbox with the next wave of bitcoin, policy and Nordic signals.

Best regards
Morten Myrstad
Founder & Editor