Partner to Leaders of the Digital Assets Industry - M&A, Capital Markets, Onchain Services. Founded by @KarlAhrend, @jp_grabs, @bernard_xyz
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Joined February 2022
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1/ The year ahead for Areta ⚡️
2025 marked a breakout year for digital assets M&A and our team at Areta, driven by regulatory clarity and accelerating institutional adoption.
We completed more than 15 M&A and capital markets transactions, surpassing $1bn in cumulative deal volume.
Our Co-Founder Bernard Schmid (@bernard_xyz) recently attended The Bridge, hosted by The Tie (@TheTieIO) in New York.
The conversations confirmed the direction we have been seeing across the market: institutional adoption of digital assets continues to accelerate.
Tokenization is no longer limited to bringing assets onchain. The focus is on making RWAs productive, as collateral and as a source of yield, and on ensuring they function like conventional financial assets.
Regulation is moving in step with the demand. The SEC opened a path for onchain trading of tokenized stocks in September, and DTCC launched its tokenization service in late October.
Thank you to The Tie for bringing this room together.
Areta was at Lugano’s Plan ₿ (@LuganoPlanB) Forum last month.
Our three takeaways:
1. Consolidation is continuing at full speed. The largest players are using M&A and strategic investments to secure licences, grow their balance sheets, and enter into emerging markets, often expanding access to financial services in the countries they invest in.
2. More digital assets investors are adding AI companies to their portfolios. The overlap between the two sectors keeps increasing.
3. Physical AI is attracting some of the largest cheques in the industry, with stablecoins positioned as the payment layer for machines.
From fast-growing markets to high-growth industries, digital assets are becoming the connecting layer of modern economy.
Thank you to Plan ₿, Tether (@tether) and the City of Lugano for hosting.
London is a home base for Areta. Over the next weeks, the city welcomes the digital asset industry for DAS London (@blockworksDAS) and Solana Breakpoint.
Our Co-Founder Jan-Philip (@jp_grabs), Vice President Harish, and Analysts Josh (@jh016crypto) and Owen (@OwenYan11) will be at both, meeting founders, investors, partners and friends.
If you’re attending and would like to connect, reach out.
Welcome to the Team, Philipp!
Philipp joins Areta as a Director, bringing 10+ years of institutional finance experience, complemented by hands-on entrepreneurial experience in AI and digital assets.
Prior to joining Areta, Philipp worked at Barclays in Frankfurt and London, and at ACXIT Capital Partners (now part of Stifel), advising corporate and large-cap private equity clients on M&A, LBO, ECM and acquisition financing transactions.
Philipp has been active in the digital asset space since 2017. In 2023, he founded Genesis 256, a capital allocation, strategic advisory and protocol-level execution platform at the intersection of AI and digital assets. In 2026, he was appointed to the Experts Board of Blockchain Bundesverband (Bundesblock), with a focus on AI x Digital Assets.
Please join us in welcoming Philipp as he begins this next chapter with the team.
Our Co-Founder Karl-Martin shared his view with Bloomberg on how Binance has handled the aftermath of the hack.
Spoke to @RyanJamesWeeks at @business about Binance’s response to the hack.
The way Binance has acted in a crisis and absorbed a $6.3B loss is remarkable. Withdrawals reopened within three days of the incident, and Binance is drawing on its own profits and insurance funds to fully reimburse customers. Outflows and rebalancing from traders were expected, but the damage has stayed well contained, with net inflows already positive today.
Given how quickly and transparently Binance responded to and handled the attack, the impact on Binance itself will be minor. The impact of the wave of the recent attacks on the broader industry remains to be seen...
Read the full article: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
A difficult day for the industry, but the response has been impressive. Within hours, issuers, protocols and Binance were working together to contain the breach. Our Co-Founder Karl-Martin’s summary below.
Industry update, the Binance security incident:
What happened?
Yesterday Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, suffered a security breach. More than $6B in digital assets was moved out of its operational wallets across several blockchains. By value, it is the largest incident of its kind on record.
Industry response
The industry reacted quickly. Within three hours, stablecoin issuers including Tether and Circle had frozen over $2.4B of the affected assets, and lending protocols paused markets to limit spillover. Binance has temporarily halted withdrawals, says client funds are safe, and has committed to covering all losses.
My view
So far the situation appears contained and well within Binance’s capacity to resolve. The speed and coordination of the industry’s response is a strong signal of how far market infrastructure has matured. The second- and third-order consequences remain yet to be seen over the coming weeks, but we are hopeful that the situation can be resolved swiftly. It is another test for our industry with the chance to come out even more battle-tested than ever before.
We wish the Binance team and everyone affected all the best as this gets resolved.
Our Director Sid (@96siddharthshah) is heading to Mumbai next week, the financial capital of the country leading global crypto adoption for three years in a row.
He’ll take the main stage at Solana Summit India on 2 November to discuss tokenisation, stablecoins and the future of finance, then join Devcon 8 (@EFDevcon) later in the week.
If you’re in Mumbai, reach out to meet.
New York is a crossroads of institutional finance and digital assets, and a familiar address for Areta.
This week, our Co-Founder Bernard (@bernard_xyz) is at Swell, The Bridge and Link:NYC.
If you would like to meet, reach out.
Our Co-Founder Jan-Philip Grabs at @EBlockchainCon Barcelona with @Stifel, @WhiteCase, and @generaltensor on what’s holding back private equity buyouts in crypto, and how that’s starting to change.
We cover institutional staking, infrastructure M&A and upcoming protocol upgrades across major networks in our latest Areta Insights, the Q3'26 Infrastructure Snapshot.
Subscribe to receive the next edition: manage.kmail-lists.com/subsc…
Institutions now hold more than a third of staked ETH.
Their share rose from about a quarter at the end of December 2025 to 35.3% at the end of June, and Morgan Stanley, BNY and SharpLink have since each selected a staking provider.
Overall, staked ETH reached a record 43.7m in October, or 35.8% of supply. Lido remains the largest staking entity with 21.8%, followed by Binance at 7.4%, while no other labelled entity holds more than 4%.
2/
Saber enables financial institutions, fintechs and businesses to move money across key global and emerging-market corridors using stablecoin-powered infrastructure.
The investment will accelerate Saber’s expansion across Asia-Pacific and the Gulf through securing new local licences and banking relationships, and support its launch into B2B payments for supplier payments, treasury management and working capital.
Areta is pleased to have advised Saber Money (@Sabermoney), a stablecoin payment infrastructure company for emerging markets, on securing strategic investment from Tether (@tether) and CMCC Global’s Titan Fund (@CMCC_Global) to scale stablecoin-powered payments.
Last week in Singapore, our Head of APAC, Joseph Goh (@josephgjh), joined Adam Bilmes of S&P Dow Jones Indices (@SPDJIndices) and Elizabeth Yenko (@hey_elizabethy) of New York Life Investment Management (@NYLIManagement) on stage at The Capital Summit x Asia Stablecoin Conference to discuss what makes an onchain investment product institutionally investable.
The view from the stage:
The institutional focus in digital assets has shifted from proof of concept to market entry, with distribution central to the next phase of tokenisation.
5/ Market Structure & Regulation
Eight regulatory milestones across four regions fall between September 2026 and January 2027.
These include the close of the Commission’s MiCA review and the opening of the UK’s FCA authorisation gateway on 30 September, Singapore’s MAS consultation closing on 16 October and the GENIUS Act taking effect on 18 January 2027.
