Karl-Martin Ahrend

Our co-founders will be at @EthCC from March 30 to April 2, speaking and connecting with founders, investors, and builders at the forefront of digital assets. @jp_grabs | @KarlAhrend | @bernard_xyz It’s shaping up to be a strong week of ideas and energy in Cannes. If you want to talk about M&A, capital markets transactions, or your foundation/labs strategy, feel free to reach out.

Shared the latest edition of our digital asset payments and stablecoin update. Key takeaway: 1. Capital formation: funding and strategic activities are increasingly focused on businesses with regulated wrappers, direct fiat connectivity, and infrastructure that can support enterprise-grade money movement 2. Commercial adoption: incumbents are moving beyond observation and beginning to integrate stablecoins into existing card, payments, and settlement workflows, as illustrated by developments such as Visa with Bridge 3. Regulatory enablement: policy and market structure are gradually making stablecoins more usable within mainstream financial infrastructure, particularly across settlement, treasury, and broader cross-border payment use cases Those interested in receiving future editions can share their email in the comments or contact me directly to be added to the distribution list.

3/ Stripe acquired Bridge for about $1.1bn in October 2024, a transaction that closed in February 2025. Mastercard is paying a larger headline price for another scaled stablecoin infrastructure provider. Seen through that lens, the transaction is less about adding another payment product. It is about inserting Mastercard into the layer that connects traditional payment rails with stablecoin movement. The takeaway is simple. Mastercard is not trying to replace cards or rebuild the financial system from scratch. It is making sure that as new forms of money appear, they still move through infrastructure that Mastercard helps operate. That is where the long-term leverage sits. We will continue covering transactions shaping digital asset infrastructure through M&A Radar. Follow @areta_io to stay updated.

2/ What stands out here is that Mastercard is no longer just experimenting with crypto partnerships or enabling cards that touch digital assets. This is a move to own a deeper layer of the infrastructure. BVNK sits right at the intersection where fiat systems meet stablecoins and on-chain settlement, which is exactly where a lot of financial activity is beginning to move. BVNK last raised $50m in December 2024 at a reported valuation of around $750m. On that reference point, Mastercard is paying roughly 2.0x the last private mark on the upfront consideration and about 2.4x on the full headline value.

1/ We’ve been covering payments in digital assets for a while now and have spent time looking at how legacy players adapt as new financial rails emerge. This acquisition lines up closely with what we expected to see. @Mastercard has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire @BVNKFinance for up to $1.8BN, including $300m in contingent payments. The transaction remains subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions, with Mastercard indicating it expects the deal to close before the end of 2026.

Our co-founder @jp_grabs joined @TheTieIO in NYC for a conversation on the short and long term drivers of value in digital assets. He breaks down the difference between short-term narrative cycles and the long-term shift toward fundamentals, explaining why tokens are likely to be evaluated much more like equities as the market matures. If you want a clearer lens on how protocols should think about metrics, value capture, and the relationship between activity and token holders, get in touch with our team.

@masonnystrom For anyone looking for more context on the underlying stablecoin payment infrastructure: x.com/KarlAhrend/sta… we also cover these names in our stablecoin payments newsletter if anyone wants to stay up to date just ping here 👇

The top high growth, private stablecoin companies today (based on my subjective input, no specific order, no tokens, payments/stables as primary rev driver) - ARQ/DolarApp - Redot Pay - Felix Pago - Rain - Reap - Nomad - M0 - Agora - Coinflow - Mesh - MoonPay - OpenFX Who am I missing?

1/ How should tokens be treated in an M&A transaction? In 2025, we saw crypto M&A activity surge to record levels, driven by a shift toward a more constructive legislative posture and renewed strategic confidence. We at @areta_io have advised numerous leadership teams on equity and token transactions. While equity deals are typically straightforward, the involvement of tokens adds significant complexity. We’ve put our insights into a concise report covering, follow along 🧵

4/ The open question is competitive. If advanced capabilities become embedded standards through infrastructure owned by Visa, other processors and networks in Argentina will need to respond at the same level. Product differentiation at the edge becomes harder when the core stack is consolidated. We will continue tracking these shifts as they unfold. Stay tuned with @areta_io for more M&A notes as we follow how these moves reshape the stack or comment below to receive our dedicated stablecoin payments newsletter

3/ What I find important here is not the feature list, but the factor of control. Innovation at the network layer can now be embedded directly into issuer processing. Risk models can be integrated closer to transaction origination. Tokenization standards can be deployed without relying on third party alignment cycles.

1/ Visa has completed its acquisition of Prisma and Newpay in Argentina from Advent. With this transaction, Visa is no longer only interfacing with the market through partnerships like it did before. It now sits inside the domestic processing layer. (No valuation was disclosed)

Across traditional payments and digital assets, the issuance layer plays the same structural role: it is the institution that stands behind the value in circulation. In the card ecosystem, issuing banks extend credit, warehouse fraud and chargeback risk, manage liquidity and regulatory capital, and monetize their balance sheet through net interest income and interchange. In digital assets, stablecoin issuers stand behind reserve assets, manage redemption and counterparty exposure, and monetize float through reserve yield. The settlement rail differs. The economic function does not. Further analysis on the structural parallels between traditional and digital payment systems is available in our full report. If you like to stay on top of the developments in this market through our newsletter, ping me or comment below!

Welcome to the Team, Harish Chari! 🚀 Harish joins @areta_io as Vice President of Investment Banking, bringing a strong blend of advisory, operational, and financial expertise across digital assets, fintech, payments, and financial infrastructure. He brings extensive experience advising high growth fintech and crypto companies on mergers and acquisitions, capital raises, and broader strategic transactions. Prior to Areta, Harish was at Royal Park Partners in London, where he worked with fintech companies across crypto Harish also was part of the Strategic Finance team at Checkout (dot) com, partnering with senior leadership on financial planning, strategic initiatives, and M&A evaluation. Please join us in welcoming Harish to Areta as he begins this next chapter with the team.

Welcome to the Team, Sach Varu! 🚀 After discovering Bitcoin in 2017 and seeing crypto as the next frontier, Sach gradually moved from traditional capital markets into the digital asset space. Over the past several years, he has worked closely with leading crypto projects, supporting GTM for derivatives platforms, leading fundraising efforts, and helping perpetual futures exchanges scale with institutions, from liquidity strategy through to regulatory positioning. Sach brings deep experience across both traditional markets and on-chain finance. Before crypto, Sach spent 15 years across FX, OTC, and systematic trading at tier one firms including Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, working across London, New York, and most recently Hong Kong, where he focused on building global distribution and institutional relationships. Please join us in welcoming Sach to Areta as he begins his journey with the team.

@perperp_er Please apply through the careers email, thank you for the interest!

@KarlAhrend How can I apply to investment banking position?

Lots of calls and messages reached me over the last few weeks, all asking the same: is this a good time to buy??? 🤑 Over the years, I learned to maneuver these questions without giving any investment advice. But there are deeper, more profound questions nestled into it: Where is the crypto market headed now? Are we going into a multi-year bear market again? At @areta_io , we believe there are structural tailwinds and more institutional subsectors (e.g. stablecoin payments & tokenization/RWAs) that will suffer less than, for example, NFTs/Blockchain Gaming last cycle, hence we are optimistic. But whatever your view is on the cycle - here is the one investment advice I can wholeheartedly give: now is the moment to invest your time‼️ If you have been eyeing the space for a while or are already in a crypto role you don't truly love, doubling down now is great timing - you don't want to be doing it when everything is going crazy... And so are we doubling down when timing is good! We are hiring on all fronts - please reach out if you want to shape the digital assets space together with our rockstar team.

@ItsTymo Thank you ser, we will review!

@KarlAhrend Couldn’t agree more! I sent in a resume and would love to discuss what I’d bring to the marketing role in more depth!

@TheCarlbrutal Love it, thanks for the interest!

@KarlAhrend Couldn’t agree more 👍🏽 Reaching out today about the positions you guys posted

@risk_mode Exactly! Also, always better to position yourself ahead of the next wave to properly catch it (vs. trying to climb it while it's already in motion..)

@KarlAhrend same here with constant buy timing queries crypto roles grab easier in quiet stretches before crowds swarm