Early Riders | Open Range Weekly | 01.18.26
Bitcoin rebounded 4.5% on the week to a market capitalization of $1.90T.
Early Riders Media
This week’s podcast explored TradFi’s accelerating move onto digital-asset rails, Nick Johnson joining the Early Riders team, and Onramp's announcement of “Onramp for Everyone”.
The Early Riders team released their new whitepaper this week following additional traction and more widespread interest in bitcoin denominated investing.
You can find all our episodes on our podcast website as well as listen on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
Industry & Institutional Updates
Standard Chartered prepared to launch a crypto prime brokerage offering trading, financing, and custody for bitcoin, Ether, and other digital assets.
21Shares launched its bitcoin-and-gold ETP on the London Stock Exchange, offering UK investors a regulated and physically backed platform incorporating both assets.
BitGo looks to raise $201M in its upcoming IPO at a $1.85B valuation as public-market appetite for digital asset firms continues to grow.
DZ Bank secured a MiCA license, receiving regulatory approval to offer retail crypto trading.
Visa partnered with BVNK to enable stablecoin payouts over Visa Direct allowing businesses to send payouts directly to recipients’ stablecoin wallets.
State Street rolls out its own digital-asset services as the firm plans to support money-market, exchange-traded funds, and cash products such as tokenized deposits and stablecoins.
Newrez, which is one of the top five mortgage lenders, announced that it will begin recognizing crypto assets during the underwriting process making it the first mortgage provider to do so.
Strive secured shareholder approval to acquire Semler Scientific, as they look to expand on their existing bitcoin holdings, however both firms' stocks fell by double digits after the announcement.
CoinGecko explores a potential sale for up to $500M, after crypto M&A activity reached nearly $8.6 billion in 2025.
Alpaca raised $150M at a nearly $1.15B valuation to expand brokerage infrastructure with APIs that power firms like Kraken.
Project Eleven closed a Series A raising $20 million at a $120 million valuation as the firm seeks to expand its existing tools built to protect crypto networks from post-quantum threats.
Paxos has been surging as their digital asset infrastructure platform has grown nearly 450% since 2025, with the total value of their tokenized assets reaching $6.8B.
Regulatory Updates
South Korea looks to approve spot Bitcoin ETFs imminently offering domestic investors access for the first time.
What We're Watching
Bitpanda plans to pursue a nearly $5B IPO in 2026, as the public market pipeline continues to back up with digital asset firms. Bitpanda, backed by Peter Thiel, the co-founder of firms such as PayPal and Palantir, is reportedly working with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank for the offering.
Founded in 2014, Bitpanda provides regulated distribution, custody, and brokerage services across multiple European jurisdictions. The firm currently serves more than 7 million users and is looking to use the funds to expand into additional products as the company no longer wants to be associated solely with cryptocurrencies, but with a broad range of asset classes instead.
Numerous digital asset firms have filed for IPOs in 2026 including Kraken and Grayscale. These announcements to-date have been built on the backs of existing offerings from 2025 such as Circle, Gemini, Bullish, and eToro.
Chart of the Week
Conservative estimates place bitcoin between 200-400M holders worldwide, which is less than 5% at most of the global population.
Bitcoin’s user base still lands in the innovation phase highlighting how early existing holders are, even at a market cap of nearly $1.90T today.
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Early Riders is the first bitcoin-denominated venture firm, raising, holding, investing, and returning capital in bitcoin. Learn more about how to get involved www.earlyriders.com.
Make sure to keep up with all our research at earlyriders.com/research.