This week
Visa brought close to 100 people to the National Museum in Oslo yesterday — banks, acquirers, merchants and crypto-native companies — for its first stablecoin summit in Norway. Kaupr was in the room all day, and this edition is built around what was said there.
The case for stablecoins came first, from Visa itself: the only form of money that ticks all five boxes. Then DNB answered no, and explained why. Then four people on a stage were asked whether stablecoins are a new rail, a niche or overhyped, and gave three different answers.
Separately in this edition: CoinShares has asked 2,230 wealthy investors in seven countries what they hold, and the Swedish answers are the most cautious of the lot. Ace Digital reports a profit and no debt. Hilbert opens its own trading strategy to outside money. And NBX can now pay customers out in cash in more than 200 countries.
This edition comes out on Wednesday rather than Tuesday because of the summit.
Morten Founder & Editor, Kaupr
Blockchain Sweden’s ten questions
Seven of eight parties want it. The Companies Act does not.
Asked whether Sweden should aim to be a leading country in tokenisation, seven of the eight parties answered yes. One said it did not know.
The Swedish Parliament, Riksdagen.
The problem is not in Brussels
The EU's DLT pilot regime has applied since March 2023. German law has allowed securities on a distributed ledger since 2021, and the first trading and settlement platform inside the pilot is running in Frankfurt.
The inquiry that never took effect
Swedish company law requires the share register to be kept centrally. A government inquiry set out the changes needed, to take effect on 1 January 2025. It never happened. The consequence is that Swedish companies cannot in practice tokenise their shares inside the EU's own framework. No Swedish company has applied to join the pilot.
What the association is doing about it
Blockchain Sweden is pushing on three fronts: a proposal to Finansinspektionen for guidance on the step from a tokenised security to actual settlement, Sweden raised as an example in the European Commission's MiCA review, and the legal change taken to the new Riksdag. "This requires no new inquiry. The proposals exist. What is needed is for the work to resume."
The tax question surprised them most
Asked whether Sweden should simplify the tax rules for crypto-assets while preserving legal certainty and tax revenue, seven of eight answered yes and one said it did not know. Blockchain Sweden calls the support stronger than expected, including from parties that rarely object to complicated rules.
Tens of thousands of transactions in one session
The problem they point to is practical. Someone using crypto-assets in a game can make tens of thousands of transactions in a single session, and with AI tools it can run to hundreds a minute. Declaring each individual transaction is not possible in practice. It hits ordinary users who want to get it right, and makes Sweden harder to operate in for serious companies.
They are writing the proposal themselves
Broad political agreement that something needs doing is unusual, and Blockchain Sweden says it should be used. The association is drawing up a proposal for how taxation can be simplified without weakening legal certainty or tax revenue, and taking it to both the politicians and Skatteverket.
Denmark’s crypto tax bill
The bill goes to the Folketing in February 2027
Denmark's crypto taxation bill has a date and a place in the government's legislative programme for 2026–2027, the Nordic Blockchain Association announced on 6 October.
Christiansborg, where the bill goes in February.
A framework from 1922
Crypto ownership in Denmark is taxed under rules dating back to 1922, close to a century before the technology existed. The association points to uncertainty for investors and to gains and losses being taxed asymmetrically, which it says leaves Danish crypto investors worse off than their European neighbours. Around 500,000 Danes own crypto.
"We're basically ready with the solution"
That was Jakob Engel-Schmidt's message to Dansk Blockchain Forum at Christiansborg, organised by the Nordic Blockchain Association and Liberal Alliance. What the model still needed, he said, was backing inside the government and then a majority in the Folketing. He sketched the main lines: tax on a realisation basis, when you sell, instead of today's model; make it easy to trade and swap crypto; and crypto taxed neither higher nor lower than other financial assets.
He also acknowledged that the Danes who followed the rules are the ones who have been hit hardest, and said the issue needs resolving soon — new international reporting rules arrive in 2027, when trading data starts flowing to the tax authorities automatically.
Last year it was left out
When the Danish parliamentary year opened on 7 October 2025, the crypto tax bill was not on the list. A working group had prepared it with the Ministry of Taxation and it was ready for a vote. Jakob Mikkel Hansen, chief executive of the Nordic Blockchain Association, told Kaupr he was sorely disappointed, and set out what the 1922 rules do: gains can be taxed at up to 53 per cent while losses give deductions worth roughly half that, which can leave people owing tax on gains they never realised.
In a drawer since
Børsen reported on Monday that the working group — authorities, business and the crypto industry — agreed on the model more than a year ago, and that the proposal has been gathering dust since.
The Bitcoin apps, in Oslo
The apps built after bitcoin, and what they let you do
Polyteknisk Forening and Bitcoinpolitisk Institutt Norge have built an evening in Oslo on Wednesday around a single question: what can you do with these applications that you could not do before? Buy wine, insure yourself, save, borrow or take part in new markets.
Foto: Kyoto International Manga Museum
What is named
Prediction markets such as Polymarket. The crypto bank Aave. Developments in insurance, stablecoins and new forms of state money. The organisers put it as the applications that have followed in bitcoin's wake and are widening the financial sector — and bitcoin itself.
Who is talking
Svein Grimholt, co-founder of Babel · Dominik Langer of 21WINES · Ken Siva Lie, senior adviser at Norges Bank · Artur Michel, digital assets expert · Jakob Notland, principal engineer at Riften Labs · Silvija Seres, AI expert and board member of Bitcoinpolitisk Institutt Norge · Morten Søberg, its secretary general.
Rosenkrantz' gate 7 in Oslo, doors at 17:00, the conversation 17:30–18:30. NOK 239 for non-members, in person only — there is no stream.
Latvia in the lead
Latvia has issued more MiCA licences than Lithuania and Estonia combined
Latvia has nine standalone MiCA CASP licences, and thirteen counting electronic money institution licences. Lithuania and Estonia have three between them. The count was published on 5 October by Zitadelle AG, which sells Latvian licensing services, and is based on Latvijas Banka's own announcements.
Three licences in one day
Three firms received a MiCA licence and a payment institution licence on the same day. The CASP application fee is EUR 2,500, among the lowest in the EU, and Latvijas Banka offers free pre-licensing consultations. Since January there has also been a specialised bank licence with EUR 1 million in initial capital.
What the supervisor looks at
Governance, anti-money-laundering controls, capital, and real presence in Riga. "A Latvian licence is not a shortcut," the report says.
The other two
Lithuania once hosted hundreds of registered crypto firms under its old national regime; under MiCA the bar is a full authorisation. Estonia's transitional period ended on 1 July this year, and the old virtual currency licences were cancelled.
Riga expects 600 people for a day on licences, payments and capital
UN:BLOCK Fintech runs on Thursday, a one-day conference from the team behind UN:BLOCK Europe, put together with the Latvian Blockchain Association. More than 600 founders, regulators, investors and advisers are expected, and the programme is built around MiCA, cross-border payments, capital mobilisation, artificial intelligence, financial literacy and partnerships between banks and fintech companies.
The ones who have been through it
Four of the chief executives behind Latvia's first MiCA licences go through what the process was actually like, and what it means for growing across the EU: Can Sun of Backpack EU, Alex Novozhenov of Nodu, Sławek Zawadzki of Kanga Exchange and Vytautas Zabulis of H Finance.
Why payments are still slow
Bolt, Paybis, Nexpay, SEB and Latvijas Banka sit down on why international payments remain slow and expensive.
The nine billion that is not moving
Another session asks who wakes up the roughly EUR 9 billion held in Latvian savings and pension assets, with Dana Gorina of Digilo, Nauris Bloks of Twino, Mārtiņš Valters of Mintos and Māra Meiere of AS Crefo Birojs.
Workshops, not just panels
The practical sessions cover MiCA, licensing for payment and electronic money institutions, crowdfunding and anti-money-laundering requirements, with people from Latvijas Banka available to meet.
NBX and SEB are on the participant list.
Identity and the European wallet
Signicat's identity lead on what three European conferences showed
Jon Ølnes, VP of digital identity and regulation at Signicat, has written up what he took away from the Global Digital Collaboration Conference in Geneva, the ENISA trust services forum in Tallinn and the ETSI-CEN workshop on standards for the European Digital Identity Wallet.
The wallet works. Nobody knows what it is for yet
Working implementations were demonstrated. What is missing is a reason to open it: opening a bank account is useful but rare, and the eIDs that succeeded before got there through weekly use, built on cooperation between banks and government. Many member states will launch late, in breach of eIDAS, and Ølnes expects that to have no consequences.
Twenty-seven variants, and an intermediary business in between
Wallets will differ in attributes and in the personal identification data they carry, so a relying party has to support more than 27 versions. Ølnes expects that to make intermediaries offering a single API more important — which is the business Signicat is in. Most member states have not defined how relying parties register, or who runs the registers, and because registration is national, wallet use stops at the EU border.
No certified wallet before 2027
The architecture framework was finalised weeks before the conferences. Whether an uncertified wallet can carry qualified signatures, or be accepted across borders, is unresolved.
The automation argument, with a Baltic example
Some member states insist on a human in the loop for identity proofing. Ølnes points to Smart-ID in the Baltics, which runs fully automated with close to zero incidents, and notes that the authorities demanding human review are not the ones paying for it.
Agentic identity: a lot of talk, few results
Wallet protocols could carry delegation to an agent, but that depends on the agent platform providers. Ølnes thinks the European Business Wallet is the likelier route.
Industry Notes
The Danish tokenization platform won the Tokenization Infrastructure Award at the RWA Week Awards 2026, handed out during RWA Summit Singapore on 9 October. DigiShares was represented by Mark Mariampillai, Head of Business Development.
Sweden's DAC8 filing has a deadline
The new KU94 report must be filed by 1 April by anyone who ran a reporting-obligated business at any point during 2026 — including those who have since stopped. Skatteverket holds a webinar on what to report, how and when on Thursday at 10:00, in Swedish.
Kaupr Events
Coming up has moved
Events have their own newsletter now. Kaupr Events carries our own live events, picks from across the Nordics and Baltics, and recordings of what you missed — which is why there is no Coming up section in this edition.
Already there: the Virtune recording
Last Wednesday's live session with Virtune is up. Christopher Kock, chief executive and co-founder, and Chief Sales Officer Andreas Severin on what is driving tokenization, which platforms the financial industry is building on, and how investors can gain exposure through regulated ETPs. Moderated by Morten Myrstad. The player sits on the page.
Next: the calendar
The next issue is a calendar of what is on across the Nordics and Baltics over the coming months.
Explore Onchain by Kaupr
Thanks for reading the twelfth edition of Onchain Growth.
We're here to follow the industry and community driving onchain finance forward across the Nordics and Baltics.
Morten Founder & Editor, Kaupr