Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

I mentioned in a recent interview that the first book I read about crypto was Nathaniel Popper’s Digital Gold back in 2015. The book traces the stories of the early pioneers, those involved in Bitcoin early on, such as Gavin Andresen, Roger Ver, and Hal Finney. In the early days Bitcoin was a libertarian project, to many today it still is, but the origin story has been largely lost in the modern discussions about Bitcoin and crypto more widely as an asset class or as a means of payment.  

Recently I attended the Digital Assets Forum here in London. What struck me was just how much the world of cryptocurrency has evolved over the past decade. We’ve gone from using the term cryptocurrency, to cryptoassets, to now digital assets. Each shift reflects a change in sentiment, use cases, and perhaps most importantly institutional involvement. 

At the event the institutional pull was clear. Bankers, asset managers, regulators, and law firms filled the room. The interest was genuine — not a fad, and not speculative in the way crypto was perceived to be by some analysts. Products such as ETFs and ETPs now track various digital assets and sit comfortably within mainstream diversification strategies. The question is not whether institutions are interested in digital assets, but how best to engage to match client appetite and risk profile. 

The broader macro backdrop has also shifted. The Trump administration's openly pro-crypto stance has changed the regulatory mood globally, and London and Europe more broadly want to be at the forefront of the emerging digital assets world.

Significantly, the event took place against a backdrop of falling prices across the crypto space. Bitcoin had fallen by more than 50% from its peak in October 2025, yet there was no panic amongst attendees. Institutional interest is clearly about far more than short term price movements, and with the growth in stablecoins, as well as the tokenisation of real world assets (RWA), the interest in digital assets looks set to continue to grow.

Please find another week of fintech news, financings and exits below!

• Matt Jones

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Funding/Financing 💸

Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe. Deal data powered by Dealroom.

Stacks, an AI-platform built for enterprise finance teams, raised $23m in Series A funding — led by Lightspeed, with continued support from EQT Ventures, General Catalyst and S16VC

Blockbrain, a platform for enterprise knowledge management secured €17.5m in Series A funding — led by Alstin Capital and 13books Capital

Compliance startup Copla raised a €6m Series A funding round led by Iron Wolf Capital, with participation from from Operator Stack and existing investors

London-based Bracket raised $7m in Seed funding to accelerate growth of their treasury intelligence platform 

eBay made an undisclosed strategic investment in open banking platform True Layer

Challenger Banking and Money Management 🚀

🌍 Bridge achieved initial approval for a national bank trust charter in the US

Digital Assets ₿

🌍 Crypto venture firm Dragonfly closed their fourth fund raising $650m

🌍 Para launched their REST API to enable business to easily add stablecoin payments and cross-border rails to their products

🌍 Ledn sold $188m in bonds secured by Bitcoin — bridging retail lending with capital markets

Payments 💰

🇬🇧 Worldline launched One Commerce in the UK, which enables merchants to unify all payment channels

🇪🇺 Caption selected Mangopay to streamline private markets payment infrastructure

🇪🇺 Ingenico launched the next-generation of AXIUM payment devices, as well as the Ingenico 360 Unified Cloud Platform

🌍 India’s Pine Labs partnered with OpenAI to embed its APIs within it’s tech stack — with the aim of enabling AI-assested workflows

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Longer Reads 📜

Death of Software. Nah. - Hardcore Software

How private equity’s big bet on software was derailed by AI - Financial Times

Cryptocurreny Flows to Suspected Human Trafficking - Chainalysis

‘What do you do with all that money?’ Tether plots its global expansion - Financial Times