Nordic moves

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Two things happened this week, and they point in opposite directions. A Norwegian company took over the running of a business on another continent. A Swiss company named the Nordics as the first market for its European entity.

Different companies, different regulatory realities, same movement: the Nordic industry is no longer bounded by the Nordics, in either direction.

In a separate section of this newsletter we share new pieces From Onchain Build, including why we are covering the Stockholm blockathon in the first place.

Further down: Six events at Arendalsuka 2026 next week, on bitcoin, payments and where the capital comes from.

Morten
Founder & Editor,
Kaupr

Two moves in the same week, running opposite ways across borders. K33 took over the running of a company in Canada. Bitcoin Suisse named the Nordics as the first market for its European entity. You may have seen both. What follows is what sits behind them.

K33 now runs the executive management of Canadian bitcoin treasury company Sixty Six Capital, having held 46.27 percent of it since March. The practical effect is that 317 bitcoin — K33's 168 and Sixty Six's 149 — are directed from the same place.

Ownership and control are not the same instrument. A minority stake gives influence through the board and the general meeting. A management agreement puts you in charge of daily operations, which is what makes it practically possible to run two balance sheets as parts of one apparatus. Neither company's announcement mentions the bitcoin.

The two companies are opposites by design. Sixty Six is a pure accumulation vehicle, aiming to raise bitcoin per share over time, and it keeps that strategy. K33 runs an active treasury, where the balance sheet feeds revenue-generating activity such as treasury-backed lending — and it now has custody, lending and currency infrastructure it can point at both holdings.

The fee attached to the agreement is 200,000 Canadian dollars a year, which is not where the significance lies. What the agreement shows is what K33 thinks its infrastructure is for: not only serving clients, but running the businesses it invests in.

Read the story on kaupr.io →

When K33 first moved on Sixty Six, the argument was about capital markets as much as bitcoin. A stake in a company listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange gives it a presence in Canada and, indirectly, in the US capital market — which the company said could strengthen its position as a provider to larger retail clients, corporates and institutions wanting to use digital assets in treasury and investment strategies.

The position began with a non-binding letter of intent in February, later finalised in the spring, negotiated with a limited number of shareholders rather than offered to the market — roughly 70 percent cash, 25 percent newly issued K33 shares.

Read the February story →

Ammy Edberg joins Bitcoin Suisse (Europe) AG as general manager for Sweden and the Nordics, Kristoffer Nystrom as general manager for the Nordics. Two management roles filled hours apart is a market entry with a structure behind it, not two hires — and the Nordics is the first market the company has named in Europe.

Edberg is among the most visible voices in the Swedish crypto scene and brings established reach rather than a sales pipeline. Nystrom returns to the company where his crypto career began, after three and a half years at Danish payments firm Januar.

What Bitcoin Suisse will actually offer in the region, which countries come first, and when the operation goes live are all still open. Both appointees signal that a formal announcement is coming.

Read the story on kaupr.io →

The company is less foreign to the region than the name suggests. Bitcoin Suisse was founded in Zug in 2013 by Danish software developer Niklas Nikolajsen, at a point when professional participants in the market were scarce, and it helped build what became Crypto Valley. Nikolajsen stepped down as chairman at the end of 2021 and is now honorary chairman, still among the largest shareholders.

What arrives in the Nordics is a private banking model applied to crypto: more than three billion Swiss francs under management, a minimum deposit of 50,000 francs, and a dedicated relationship manager for every client.

The European entity was set up in 2018 and has operated under Liechtenstein's TVTG framework since. The CASP licence it took there in June builds on that registration and removes the need for separate national approvals — which is why Liechtenstein is the part worth watching. In conventional asset management, Luxembourg and Switzerland have long been the legal gateways into Europe. MiCA is producing the same structure for crypto assets, and the competition to be the preferred gateway has started.

Read the June story →

New in this issue. Things you can use at work today.

ESMA publishes the MiCA register, but nothing you would call a lookup tool. Two Nordic companies have now built one each, independently of the other. If you need to know whether a counterparty can still legally serve EU clients, you now have two places to check in under a minute.

Danish firm Penning has launched a free public register, refreshed daily: 338 authorised providers across 26 EEA home states and 21 authorised stablecoin issuers, searchable by country, service and status, with open data in JSON and CSV and an embeddable live badge. It is compiled from ESMA's register and supplemented with national FSA registers. Penning says it is free to use and cite.

Penning's register →

Norwegian firm Cointegrity has run a comparable register through Micahub for some time, mirroring ESMA weekly and separating authorised CASPs, ART and EMT issuers, and firms that are not approved. It sits inside a broader application and compliance platform rather than standing alone.

Norwegian firm Cointegrity has run a comparable register through Micahub for some time, mirroring ESMA weekly and separating authorised CASPs, ART and EMT issuers, and firms that are not approved. It sits inside a broader application and compliance platform rather than standing alone.

Micahub's register →

Go deeper: We interviewed Torstein Thinn about Micahub in June

Onchain Build is our running coverage, published continuously on its own page.
Here is what went up since the last issue.

Kaupr and FirstBlock are partnering around the Stockholm blockathon in September. Fati Hakim and Morten Myrstad set out the reasoning on video, and it is the same starting point from both sides: blockchain in the Nordics gets discussed as finance and cryptocurrency, while what is built outside that goes largely uncovered.
Watch and read on Onchain Build → · The full story on kaupr.io →

The blockathon in Stockholm has published its tracks. Six of the eight have nothing to do with payments or trading — traceability, verification, identity. For a field that has spent a decade being described as financial technology, that split is the most interesting number of the week. Read about the 8 challenges →

One of the eight challenges, and a concrete answer to what the other six actually look like in practice. Read about truth and documentation →

KTH Royal Institute of Technology is the latest to join.
Read about KTH → · Read about the first 6 partners→

Read and watch everything on Onchain Build →

Arendalsuka is Norway's equivalent of Almedalsveckan in Sweden and Folkemødet in Denmark: the week when politics, business and public administration meet in one place. It runs 10–14 August.

Two of this year's events are hosted by the sector itself, Firi and BPI. Stø has invited it to a third.

The future of the digital wallet — Hosted by Firi on Monday, with Vipps' chief commercial officer and the state secretary at Norway's Ministry of Digitalisation on stage. Their premise: more Norwegians under 40 own cryptocurrency than own shares. Programme Firi →

Bitcoin and the war — Hosted by BPI Norge on Monday at SpareBank 1 Sør-Norge: two debates, on bitcoin in international trade under sanctions, and on money in Palestine. Vetle Lunde of K33 is on the panel; BPI's Morten Søberg chairs both. Two days before the payments duel asks a version of the same question, from an entirely different host. Programme BPI→

The payments duel — Hosted by Stø, the company behind BankAxept, on Wednesday. Torbjørn Bull Jenssen of K33 takes part in a duel on crypto versus fiat. Also on the programme: Norges Bank, Visa, Nets, Nordea and Revolut. This is not the sector holding its own event. It is the sector placed in the middle of the payments establishment, on the establishment's terms. Streamed.
Programme Stø →

When payment becomes preparedness — Hosted by Finance Innovation, Tuesday. On the panel: Vipps MobilePay, Norges Bank, Mastercard and a member of parliament's finance committee. The framing is blunt: European alternatives are barely present, and even Norwegian solutions rest on foreign infrastructure. Streamed.
Programme NCE Finance Innovation →

Are we prepared? — Hosted by Nets, Wednesday. Nine in ten Norwegian payments are digital.
Programme Nets →

Together with the duel, that makes three events on payment preparedness in two days, largely featuring the same people — Torbjørn Hægeland of Norges Bank appears at all three. Payment preparedness is the finance theme at Arendalsuka this year.

Two debates on capital — Hosted by Finans Norge and Reitan Kapital on Tuesday, and by Finansforbundet on Wednesday, the latter presenting New Financial's analysis showing Norway's capital market to be the smallest in the Nordics. Investinor, Folketrygdfondet, Nordnet and DNB Livsforsikring take part. No onchain company is in either room, and the answers will decide whether the ones with licences can scale. Programme Finans Norge →
Programme Finansforbundet →

Finanstalen — Nicolai Tangen, Tuesday, main programme. The head of the oil fund on a country exposed to markets it does not control.
Programme Finanstalen →

Most of these names were there last year too. This is not a field being discovered. It is a standing arena where the same actors return.

Thanks for reading the first edition of Onchain by Kaupr

We're here to follow the industry and community driving onchain finance forward across the Nordics and Baltics — and we're just getting started.

Onchain Growth → · Onchain Build → ·

Morten
Founder & Editor, Kaupr