Transcript 0:00 Is finance finally going on-chain? That is a question you probably could have asked more or less every year for the last five or six years. 0:10 Then I came across an opinion piece in Fortune with the title, "On-chain finance is coming to Wall Street, and ignoring it is no longer an option." 0:21 It made me think beyond Wall Street about on-chain and finance as a whole, and I came to a conclusion: something is really happening. Another title caught my attention, "Central banks on-chain." Think about it. 0:39 Central banks on-chain. This was not from a blog post or from a thought paper. No, it was the title of official articles on the website of the European Central Bank. 0:52 It was not accidental, and it was not a one-time occurrence. So what is hiding behind such titles? It is about the core structure of the European financial system changing as we speak. 1:06 The major milestone right now is called Pontes. It has hardly reached the headlines, not in the daily newspapers and barely in the financial press. 1:16 Pontes is Latin for bridges, and that is what it is, a bridge between central bank money and the tokenized world. 1:26 Banks and financial institutions that hold securities on the blockchain can settle the trade in central bank money. It starts with one bridge, but there are even more bridges being built. 1:39 Kaizer has written about DNB, Norway's largest bank, joining a group of European banks that are testing another kind of digital money, tokenized deposits. The project is called CBMT, Commercial Bank Money Tokens. 1:56 Tokenized deposits are issued by the banks themselves, not by the central bank and not by a private company, as with a stablecoin. 2:04 The idea is to move the huge amounts of money that flow between banks every day, every minute, every second, every nanosecond. DNB chose this pilot instead of joining a stablecoin consortium. But DNB is not alone. 2:21 Earlier in September, Norges Bank named 12 Norwegian banks it is talking to about tokenized deposits and digital money in general. Connect the dots. The ECB is linking central bank money to blockchain platforms. 2:35 DNB and the other European banks in CBMT are experimenting with tokenized deposits, and the Norwegian Central Bank is in dialogue with 12 banks. This is financial infrastructure being explored in real time. 2:50 On top of that comes Kiwalis, a consortium of 37 European banks planning to launch a euro stablecoin in the second half of 2026. And in parallel, the digital euro is moving on two fronts. 3:04 The first is a pilot, a kind of beta version. Payment providers are already selected, and online and mobile merchants are invited to join. 3:14 For about 12 months, the pilot will test the technology, the processes, and the user experience. The second front is in the European Parliament, where the negotiations continue. 3:25 And Christine Lagarde, the president of the ECB, is pressing for a political breakthrough before the end of the year. 3:33 When I'm spending this much time on, on central banks and central authorities, it is not that I'm a big fan of everything centrally planned. 3:42 It is for a reason, because I think all these agendas taken together should work as a wake-up call to traditional finance and to the fintech industry. 3:51 Then let us jump to a totally different context, my own small business. At Kope, we cover agentic payments where AI agents pay for things. 4:02 But we are not only writing about them, we are exploring agentic payments ourselves. We hope to take part in a pilot with stablecoin payments, where agents pay per use for content on one or more of Kope's platforms. 4:16 In another pilot, we hope to join agents pay in ordinary currency and humans too. Micropayments make pay per use possible. 4:26 It will probably become a supplement or an alternative to the subscription model we have been used to for the last ten or 15 years. So, a small Nordic entrepreneur trying to find out what future payments could look like. 4:42 At the same time as the Euro system is checking out central bank money, digital euros on blockchain platforms and the bridges between them. The common topic is on-chain, on-chain finance. 4:55 And between my small, small world and the infrastructure of the European payment system, the headlines keep coming every day. 5:03 Recently, Circle, the main issuer of the stablecoins used in the European market, launched its own blockchain called Arc. Perhaps you think this is motivated mainly by technology or a way for Circle to cut its costs. 5:18 More than 100 applications and institutions were Arc partners from the start. 5:23 Circle has also launched an Arc Studio, a tool for developers in banks, payment companies, and fintech startups who want to build applications on Arc. 5:33 So what Circle is really building is an ecosystem, an on-chain ecosystem. The big fintech companies are going on-chain too. 5:42 Stripe, Revolut, and Robinhood are combining ordinary currency and stablecoins on the payment side. Robinhood also offers stocks wrapped in tokens. These companies play two roles. 5:54 For ten or 15 years, they have been the infrastructure behind much of e-commerce and payments. 6:01 Now they are offering this infrastructure on-chain to startups and scale-ups at the same time as they continue to challenge the traditional banks. Stablecoins are also creating new businesses. 6:14 There is even a group called Stablecoin Neobanks. They offer cards, wallets, and other financial services to consumers and small businesses built on stablecoin infrastructure, or if you prefer, on-chain infrastructure. 6:29 If you think the banks and traditional finance in the main financial centers of the world are sitting back waiting to be disrupted, that is no longer the case. 6:39 On-chain is becoming a topic in more or less every boardroom. Let us now then move from payments to investments, where there is DTCC, a company I must admit I had barely heard of one year ago. 6:54 DTCC stands behind the clearing and settlement of American stock trades, and it is building on-chain solutions for trading stocks and securities around the clock together with several blockchain platforms. 7:07 The first live trades took place in July, a historic step. In October comes the full rollout, a real on-chain rollout. The stock exchanges are also buying into crypto exchanges. 7:21 ICE, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, has bought into OKX, while Deutsche Börse, the German Stock Exchange, has bought into Kraken. What about the regulation landscape then? 7:33 Perhaps you think development in the US has stalled after the CLARITY Act, the law meant to regulate the crypto market, failed to get enough support in the US Senate. It has not. 7:44 Both the SEC, which regulates securities, and the CFTC, which regulates derivatives markets, have said clearly that they will give clarity on crypto as far as their legal powers go. 7:58 After the voting in the US Senate, the SEC opened a five years test where tokenized stocks can be traded under the rules it already has. 8:07 Many crypto exchanges and other providers are trying to offer stocks wrapped in tokens, and it's still a gray area. What do you really own? The real share or just an option on it? 8:19 But the SEC's move shows that it wants the end game to be tokens on-chain. Europe is moving on the investment side too. For some years, a pilot has allowed only a handful of trading venues to handle tokenized securities. 8:34 One of them is 21X in Germany, which Capra has talked with before. The pilot regime is being opened up to more venues, and the discussion is, uh, now about how large volumes it should be possible to trade. 8:48 The European Commission wants to raise the ceiling from six to one hundred billion euros. 8:54 Nearly 30 companies and associations, among them 21X, the Lithuanian Axiology, and the Swedish Fintech Association, have signed a letter asking for the ceiling to be removed or raised far higher. 9:07 Again, both the EU and the industry are moving in the same on-chain direction while not agreeing on the pace yet. 9:16 Axiology, by the way, is also one of the four operators the Eurosystem has chosen for Pontus, the bridge to central bank money. Europe has another set of rules on the move. MiCA, the European Rules for Crypto Assets. 9:30 It had an important deadline on the first of July. Crypto exchanges need a MiCA approval to keep operating, and with it, a license that works across Europe. But the process did not stop there. 9:43 Nearly three hundred and fifty companies are approved, and new ones join every week, also from outside of Europe. 9:49 They want a legal way to offer on-chain services and access to four hundred and fifty million people in the EU and the EEA. At the same time, the European Commission has asked for input on how MiCA is working. 10:03 Perhaps there will be a MiCA two, for instance, to deal with gray areas like decentralized finance. Back to payments and to the Nordics for two more examples. 10:12 From Sweden, Centiglobe is now building a network for cross-border payments based on tokenized deposits. 10:20 And the Norwegian NBX has applied for a banking license in Latvia and has also become an agent for Monogram, one of the traditional global money transfer networks, which now also supports stablecoins. 10:33 So back to where we started. It is not only Wall Street going on-chain. It is the traditional banks. It is the fintech industry. It is e-commerce. The question stands, can you still ignore it? 10:47 You can take time to find out how this development will hit your business, whether you are a bank, a fund manager, or a fintech company, but you have to put it on the agenda. You cannot ignore it anymore. 10:59 I'm Morten Mysta, and you've been listening to Keep It Weekly.
