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Crypto’s mainstream moment has arrived, industry leaders say

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Crypto’s mainstream moment has arrived, industry leaders say

What was once viewed as a speculative fringe movement is rapidly becoming part of the world’s financial plumbing, according to executives from Binance, Revolut and Circle (CRCL) speaking at Consensus Miami on Wednesday.

“We were in the Prohibition era,” said Rachel Conlan, chief marketing officer at Binance. “Now we are in the infrastructure phase.”

Conlan said crypto is evolving beyond trading into functional everyday use cases and is “on route to becoming the fabric of everyday society.”

That shift is increasingly visible in consumer finance. Mazen ElJundi, global business head of investments at Revolut, said crypto’s narrative has moved from speculation toward “real-life utility and scaling.”

Revolut, which operates in more than 40 countries and serves over 75 million customers, now integrates crypto into a broader suite of banking services including remittances and stablecoin usage. “Crypto is about banking without borders,” he said.

At Circle, SVP of marketing Tim Queenan said institutions are increasingly exploring how to move core financial infrastructure onchain. “The infrastructure should be boring,” he said. “What you build on top of it is what’s interesting.” Queenan pointed to stablecoins becoming so embedded in payments that many users no longer even think of themselves as crypto users.

The panelists said institutional momentum, from exchange traded fund (ETF) approvals to major asset managers putting money onchain, is reinforcing retail adoption globally.

But challenges remain. Conlan said the industry still needs to reduce friction and make onboarding easier.

Read more: Crypto ETFs go mainstream as traditional finance locks in

UK’s Reliance Bank Selects Temenos SaaS to Power Digital Transformation

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UK’s Reliance Bank Selects Temenos SaaS to Power Digital Transformation

WHY THIS MATTERS: This contract serves as a potent microcosm of the larger Core Banking Transformation narrative sweeping through the financial sector. The decision by a 130-year-old, mission-driven institution like Reliance Bank to fully decommission its legacy technology and adopt a vendor’s Cloud-Native SaaS platform signals that agility and operational efficiency are now non-negotiable, even for the most specialized players. The critical takeaway for the industry is not just the technology stack, but the objective: modernization is the necessary prelude to scaling social and ethical impact. By offloading maintenance and leveraging Temenos’ open API architecture, Reliance Bank effectively frees up capital and human resources to focus squarely on expanding its deposit base and funding more social impact businesses. This move proves that the competitive pressure for digital speed is reaching every corner of the market, forcing even those banks with unique, entrenched value propositions to prioritize tech over tradition.

Temenos (SIX: TEMN), a global leader in banking technology, today announced that Reliance Bank, a specialist UK retail and business bank owned by The Salvation Army, has selected Temenos SaaS to power its digital transformation.

Reliance Bank will replace its existing legacy systems with a full suite of services, including core banking, digital and payments, on Temenos SaaS. This will help the bank to improve operational efficiency and enhance customer experience on a secure, scalable service, while creating a more agile digital foundation to support its future growth.

Leveraging Temenos’ UK Model Bank, with pre-configured capabilities specific to the local market, will enable Reliance Bank to develop new products more quickly while reducing the costs and risk of additional software customization. Meanwhile, Temenos’ open, API-based architecture will help the bank to integrate seamlessly with fintech partners to further enhance its capabilities as it looks to expand its customer base.

Founded in 1890 to provide banking services to the Salvation Army and associated organizations, Reliance Bank retains a strong focus on ethical and community banking, prioritizing lending to businesses that deliver a positive social impact in the UK. The bank offers a range of savings accounts for individuals, as well as current accounts, savings and loans for charities and SMEs.

Adopting a SaaS model, with continuous updates, support and maintenance handled by Temenos, will empower Reliance Bank to focus on its customers and social mission, rather than on managing its technology.

Nikki Fenton, CEO, Reliance Bank, commented: “Implementing Temenos SaaS is a key element of Reliance Bank’s digital transformation strategy, providing a resilient, modern infrastructure that will support our growth plans. With Temenos, we’ll be able to scale efficiently and launch customer-centric digital solutions quickly, helping us to grow our deposit base and provide more financial support to charitable and ethical institutions.”

Mark Yamin-Ali, Managing Director, Europe, Temenos, added: “We’re proud to partner with Reliance Bank on this strategic transformation, and support the bank’s mission to deliver a positive societal impact. With its flexible, cloud-native architecture, broad functionality and pre-configured capabilities for the UK market, Temenos SaaS will help Reliance Bank to meet the needs of its specialist customer base with agility and speed. This agreement reflects Temenos’ proven ability to support institutions with specific requirements, as well as our strong track record and continued momentum in the UK.”

FF NEWS TAKE: This partnership is a clear, industry-defining acceleration of the core banking transformation trend. By embracing a modern SaaS model, Reliance Bank isn’t just modernizing; it’s optimizing its entire operational foundation for unprecedented growth and positive social impact. This decisively moves the needle, demonstrating that next-generation cloud-native platforms are the essential launchpad for ethical finance. The industry must now monitor the speed at which this streamlined institution uses its new agility to outpace competitors and expand its specialized lending footprint across the UK.

Dogecoin slides 4%, bitcoin rally pauses as Iran ceasefire optimism lifts equities

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Dogecoin slides 4%, bitcoin rally pauses as Iran ceasefire optimism lifts equities

The crypto rally took a pit stop on Thursday while equities kept zooming higher.

Bitcoin BTC$80,917.45 traded at $80,945 in Asian hours, down 0.7% over 24 hours but still up 6.9% on the week. Ether (ETH) slipped 2% to $2,326, and DOGE$0.1106 was the major laggard, dropping 4.4% to $0.1106 after last week’s run took its 30-day return into the double digits.

XRP and BNB held steadier, with XRP at $1.41 and BNB up 1.3% to $643. Solana zoomed 6.1% on the week to $88.06.

The pullback came as global stock markets ripped to fresh records on U.S.-Iran ceasefire hopes, with reports indicating the two countries are working on a proposal to end the nearly 10-week conflict.

The MSCI All Country World Index advanced 0.3% and MSCI’s Asia gauge jumped 1.9% to a record, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 hitting an intraday high. South Korea passed Canada as the world’s seventh-largest equity market by value, with Softbank surging 18% and TSMC adding 3.3%. Wall Street gauges closed at all-time highs Wednesday with about 80% of S&P 500 companies beating earnings estimates, Bloomberg reported.

Brent crude held under $102 a barrel on speculation a US-Iran deal would help resume oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, while gold zoomed for a third straight day to $4,700 an ounce on Fed rate-cut bets and easing inflation expectations.

FxPro chief market analyst Alex Kuptsikevich said in a note that bitcoin’s next test sits at the 200-day moving average around $83,300. A moving average smooths out short-term volatility by averaging an asset’s price over a set period, and the 200-day version is among the most-watched long-term trend gauge among traders.

“A firm consolidation above this level would be a further sign of bullish dominance,” he wrote, adding that the first such sign came one month ago when bitcoin held above the 50-day moving average. He flagged that a short-term profit-taking phase is likely as bitcoin approaches $83,000, “allowing some of the gains to be taken.”

The structural backdrop continues to support the move. Tether’s market cap has grown by $5.9 billion over the past 60 days, per analyst Darkfost, reversing a $2 billion monthly outflow trend that ran through early 2026. Such issuances are considered to be a source of new capital entering the crypto market.

In other developments, Morgan Stanley signalled this week that US banks may eventually be able to hold bitcoin on their balance sheets despite current regulatory barriers, with the bank already running a bitcoin-based ETP and planning to launch spot crypto trading on its wealth platform later this year.

Western Union launched its own stablecoin, USDPT, on Solana to bypass traditional interbank settlement delays.

Elsewhere, BitMine added more than 100,000 ETH for the third straight week, taking its ether reserves to 5.18 million ETH worth roughly $13 billion, or 4.29% of total supply.

Altcoin Holders Have Been Waiting For Their Moment All Cycle – The Data Says It May Finally Be Here

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Altcoin Holders Have Been Waiting For Their Moment All Cycle – The Data Says It May Finally Be Here

Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure

The altcoin market has been one of the most frustrating trades in crypto for the better part of this cycle. Month after month, the expected rotation — capital flowing from Bitcoin into the broader altcoin market — was called and failed to fully materialize. Investors who positioned for an altseason that never arrived watched Bitcoin dominate while their altcoin holdings lagged or declined. The patience required to hold through that disappointment has been real and expensive.

Something in the data is beginning to shift. A CryptoQuant analysis tracking altcoin volume across centralized exchanges has identified an acceleration that stands out from the noise. Excluding the top five assets, altcoins are showing a clear and rising volume trend — the kind of broad-based participation increase that distinguishes a genuine rotation from isolated moves in a handful of large-cap tokens. The signal is not coming from one or two assets. It is coming from the broader market.

The 90-day AltSeason Index has risen rapidly to 28.6, confirming that the behavioral shift visible in the volume data is also registering in the metric specifically designed to measure Bitcoin-to-altcoin rotation. The direction of that index is the signal. Bitcoin season appears to be ending. What is replacing it may be precisely what altcoin holders have been waiting for — though whether this rotation becomes the real altseason the cycle has been missing is the question the data is now beginning to answer.

The Altseason That Never Was — and Why That Makes This One More Significant

The CryptoQuant report adds a historical dimension that reframes the current signal as more meaningful than it would otherwise appear. Throughout this entire cycle, the AltSeason Index never reached the kind of elevated readings that characterized genuine altseasons in previous cycles. The period when the index peaked was early 2024, and even that high-water mark was comparatively modest. The broad-based altcoin outperformance that defines a real altseason simply did not materialize at the scale that previous cycles delivered.

Altcoin Season Index (90 days) | Source: CryptoQuant
Altcoin Season Index (90 days) | Source: CryptoQuant

That absence is not just a historical footnote. It means that the pent-up rotation that normally gets released during altseason has been building without discharge for an extended period. The capital that typically flows from Bitcoin into the broader altcoin ecosystem during a genuine rotation phase has been accumulating in a cycle that never gave it a proper exit.

The report’s most significant forward claim centers on Ethereum. A nine-year technical convergence is approaching a resolution — a structural setup that the analysis identifies as positioning ETH for a meaningful move higher. Given Ethereum’s role as the gateway asset for the broader altcoin ecosystem, a sustained Ethereum move tends to lift the entire altcoin market alongside it.

The real altseason, by this reading, was not the one that came early and disappointed in 2024. It is the one the data suggests is approaching now — arriving later in the cycle, against a backdrop of unmet expectations, with a technical setup in Ethereum that has not been seen in nearly a decade.

Altcoin Market Cap Tests Key Inflection Zone

The total crypto market cap, excluding the top 10 assets, is attempting to stabilize near the $190–$200 billion range after a prolonged corrective phase. Structurally, the chart shows a clear transition from distribution into a potential accumulation zone, with price holding around the 200-week moving average (red), a level that has historically acted as a long-term pivot for altcoin cycles.

OTHERS index (altcoins) testing resistance | Source: OTHERS chart on TradingView
OTHERS index (altcoins) testing resistance | Source: OTHERS chart on TradingView

The recovery from early 2026 lows is constructive but not yet decisive. Price has reclaimed the short-term moving average and is now testing the 100-week (green), which is acting as dynamic resistance. The 50-week (blue) has flattened and is beginning to curl upward, signaling that downside momentum has weakened. However, the broader structure remains neutral until a clean break above the $220–$240 billion region confirms a higher high on this timeframe.

Volume behavior adds nuance. The capitulation phase earlier in the year was accompanied by a clear spike in selling volume, followed by a gradual decline in participation during the recovery. This suggests that, so far, the move higher is not driven by aggressive inflows but by reduced selling pressure.

If this level holds, the structure supports a base-building phase. Failure would likely reopen the $160 billion zone.

Featured image from ChatGPT, chart from TradingView.com 

Editorial Process for bitcoinist is centered on delivering thoroughly researched, accurate, and unbiased content. We uphold strict sourcing standards, and each page undergoes diligent review by our team of top technology experts and seasoned editors. This process ensures the integrity, relevance, and value of our content for our readers.

Crypto Fraud Shockwave: Authorities Freeze Tens Of Millions In Assets

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Crypto Fraud Shockwave: Authorities Freeze Tens Of Millions In Assets

Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure

A video message from a man calling himself Stephen Beard may have been the final move in a long-running crypto con. Days before BG Wealth Sharing went dark, Beard told investors their accounts would be taxed 12% as part of a pending initial public offering for its DSJ Exchange platform.

By Sunday, users on social media had figured out what was happening. By Monday, regulators were warning the public. By Tuesday, the domain was gone — seized by US law enforcement.

Last-Minute Warning Signs Came Too Late For Many

The Washington State Department of Financial Institutions issued an alert Monday, saying it had received complaints from investors and that BG Wealth Sharing was likely operating a scam.

Officials warned that any company requiring investors to deposit more money before they can withdraw their own funds is a strong sign of an advance fee fraud.

That warning followed similar advisories stretching back to 2025, including one from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and another from the Central Bank of Samoa, which in April called the group an outright investment scam.

Despite those red flags, thousands of people had already sent their money in. BG Wealth Sharing recruited users through heavy social media promotion.

It promised daily returns of 1.3% to 2.6%, referral bonuses, and rank-based rewards — the kind of structure that keeps people recruiting others and brings in fresh funds to pay earlier investors.

According to blockchain investigator ZachXBT, total losses from the scheme likely exceed $150 million.

US authorities have seized a domain tied to BG Wealth Sharing, according to the platform.

Between April 27 and May 3, actors connected to the group tried to move more than $92 million in crypto. ZachXBT, working alongside Tether, Binance, OKX, and US law enforcement, helped freeze over $41 million of those funds.

The BG Wealth Sharing website now shows a seizure notice from a joint operation involving Operation Level Up and the Scam Center Strike Force.

BTCUSD trading at $81,698 on the 24-hour chart: TradingView

Victims Recruited Through Social Media, Targeted For Inexperience

ZachXBT noted that many victims were still in denial after the scheme collapsed. According to him, these types of investment frauds deliberately go after inexperienced retail investors through social media, where slick branding and testimonials can look convincing to someone unfamiliar with how these operations work.

The FBI reported in April that Americans lost $21 billion to cyber-enabled crime in a single year, with crypto investment scams making up a significant portion of those losses.

BG Wealth Sharing had been running since at least 2025, and thousands of victim exchange withdrawals were identified in the investigation.

Joint Operation Signals Broader Push Against Crypto Scams

The domain seizure is part of a wider crackdown. The Scam Center Strike Force, which was involved in this operation, has previously taken action against crypto fraud networks in Southeast Asia.

United States authorities have been increasing coordination with exchanges and on-chain investigators to track and freeze funds before they can be fully laundered.

Featured image from MetaAI, chart from TradingView

Editorial Process for bitcoinist is centered on delivering thoroughly researched, accurate, and unbiased content. We uphold strict sourcing standards, and each page undergoes diligent review by our team of top technology experts and seasoned editors. This process ensures the integrity, relevance, and value of our content for our readers.

Finance Magnates Prepares for Inaugural Singapore Summit

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Finance Magnates Prepares for Inaugural Singapore Summit

Finance Magnates is officially extending its international event platform into the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region with the debut of the FM Singapore Summit. Kicking off next week, from May 12 to 14, 2026, at the Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre, the summit introduces a new strategic meeting point for the region’s financial industry.

With the event just days away, late registrations remain open, inviting retail and prime brokers, liquidity providers, banks, hedge funds, wealth and asset management firms, and payment service providers to secure their last-minute participation in what promises to be a landmark gathering for the APAC financial ecosystem.

A strategic hub for APAC expansion

The selection of Singapore as the headquarters for the new summit aligns perfectly with the city-state’s undeniable role as a pivotal regional financial node. Singapore boasts a Tier-1 regulatory framework, cutting-edge infrastructure, and a highly business-friendly environment that naturally attracts global capital. Its robust financial and economic sectors have positioned it as the go-to destination for banking, asset management, and prime brokerage. Highlighting this regional dominance, the market capitalisation of the Singapore Exchange exceeded $644billion in early 2025, significantly outpacing regional competitors. By bringing its established format to this strategic location, Finance Magnates aims to create a highly focused environment for commercial engagement and regional market development.

Laying the groundwork for business

The three-day event is designed specifically for institutional decision-makers and senior executives operating with active commercial mandates in the region. The summit will kick off next Tuesday, May 12, with an exclusive opening networking event at the Paulaner Brauhaus, offering attendees an opportunity to exchange ideas with foreign exchange and fintech leaders in an informal setting. The main exhibition will officially open its doors the following morning at Suntec Singapore. Across its wider portfolio, the Finance Magnates platform has historically connected a global audience of more than 50,000 attendees and 2,000 exhibitors from over 100 countries, setting the stage for upscale deal-making and strategic partnerships in this new APAC edition.

Driving institutional dialogue

In parallel with the expansive deal-making expo, the summit promises two days of live industry sessions and panel discussions featuring prominent thought leaders. The carefully curated agenda prioritizes structured engagement and informed discussions around regional strategy, infrastructure development, and complex regulatory considerations. Hot topics slated for exploration include the APAC liquidity landscape, the real-world application of artificial intelligence for brokers, the ongoing tokenisation revolution, and practical strategies for growing premium client segments. Ultimately, the event provides a vital platform for industry players looking to unlock unique insights, scale their offerings without increasing operational friction, and identify exclusive opportunities across the entire Asia-Pacific region before the doors open next week.

DTCC, Wall Street’s clearinghouse, works with blockchains to tokenize corporate actions

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DTCC, Wall Street’s clearinghouse, works with blockchains to tokenize corporate actions

Wall Street’s clearinghouse is working with blockchain developers to bring one of capital market’s least glamorous but most operationally complex functions onchain: corporate actions.

Frank La Salla, CEO of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), said Wednesday at Consensus 2026 in Miami that the market infrastructure giant is collaborating with several layer-1 (L1) blockchain networks to improve how dividend payments, tender offers and other post-trade events could be processed in tokenized markets.

“We are working with some very good L1s right now, who are focused on the ability to process at faster rates, have higher resiliency,” he said.

Currently, the bottleneck is that on most blockchain networks could take a few days to process corporate actions, he pointed out.

“We process millions of dividend payments a day to feed to the industry,” Le Salla said. “We need high-performance L1s to do that.”

DTCC sits at the center of U.S. capital markets infrastructure, processing roughly $20 trillion in Treasury and corporate securities trades each day. The clearinghouse has spent nearly a decade exploring blockchain applications, but La Salla said the technology only became commercially meaningful once real-world use cases began to emerge in the pst few years.

Recently, the firm accelerated its push to modernize market infrastructure with tokenization and blockchain tech. This week, DTCC announced to begin testing its tokenized securities platform in July ahead of a broader rollout in October.

La Salla said collateral movement may become blockchain’s first large-scale institutional use case. Tokenized collateral could allow firms outside U.S. market hours to access liquidity in real time without relying on legacy settlement windows. He described a scenario where firms in Asia could access U.S. dollar on a Sunday in New York by posting tokenized collateral onchain in real-time.

“That is incredibly powerful,” La Salla said.

But he cautioned that blockchain systems still face major hurdles around scalability, liquidity fragmentation and risk management.

One challenge, for example, is netting transactions. Traditional market infrastructure compresses massive trading activity into smaller settlement obligations, reducing capital requirements across the system.

“Blockchain is decentralized,” La Salla said. “Many of the efficiencies that we get in our industry are through concentration of liquidity.”

Iran Peace Deal Talk Costs Bitcoin a Trip to $83,000 After New 13-Week Highs

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Iran Peace Deal Talk Costs Bitcoin a Trip to $83,000 After New 13-Week Highs

Bitcoin (BTC) cooled from new 13-week highs at Wednesday’s Wall Street open amid mixed signals over a US-Iran peace deal.

Key points:

  • Bitcoin stops short of tapping $83,000 as momentum becomes guided by geopolitical developments.
  • Oil sees flash volatility around rumors of the Strait of Hormuz opening.
  • Bitcoin trader sees a price reset to a $78,400 trend line.

Iran deal let-down sours Bitcoin’s attack on $83,000

Data from TradingView showed a new local peak for BTC/USD of $82,833 on Bitstamp.

BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

The pair made fresh gains amid reports of a 14-point ceasefire agreement potentially coming into effect — one that would include resumption of oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

Hours later, however, US President Donald Trump said that Iran’s agreement to the terms of the truce was “perhaps, a big assumption.”

“If they don’t agree, the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before,” he added in a post on Truth Social.

Source: Truth Social

Bitcoin reacted by erasing its upside to circle $81,500 at the time of writing, still up around 1% on the day.

Oil also saw volatility, with WTI dropping over 10% in a matter of hours before rebounding to $96 per barrel.

CFDs on WTI crude oil one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Commenting on X, trading resource The Kobeissi Letter reported what it called “unusually large” short interest on WTI, which totaled nearly $1 billion, immediately before the drop.

Light crude oil futures chart. Source: The Kobeissi Letter/X

BTC price focus switches to $78,000 and higher

Bitcoin traders, meanwhile, looked to patches of potential liquidations on exchange order books for clues as to where price might head next.

Related: Bitcoin can crash to $50K if ‘most critical’ bear market test fails: Analysis

“Above, the $82.4K area still has some left. But price did take out most of the local liquidity from the past day. With price at 3 month highs, we would need to zoom out to see the other major levels,” trader Daan Crypto Trades told X followers. 

“Below, the $80.1K & $78.2K levels are good to watch if price were to trade into them.”

Crypto liquidation history (screenshot). Source: CoinGlass

Data from CoinGlass put total crypto liquidations over the past 24 hours at more than $550 million, with shorts accounting for $400 million of the total.

Trader CrypNuevo called BTC/USD “overextended” on short time frames, seeking a retracement to the 50-period simple moving average (SMA) on the four-hour chart. That stood at $78,432.

“Ideally it continues pushing straight higher without any exhaustion signs and it will overextend price even more so the short will be more atractive and worth it when we see those signs at higher prices,” he wrote on X.

BTC/USD four-hour chart with 50SMA. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Earlier, Cointelegraph reported on concerns that historical precedent called for the failure of Bitcoin’s current breakout attempt.

This article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or recommendations. All investments and trades carry risk; readers are encouraged to conduct independent research.

Kraken Launches Spot Margin Trading for US Clients

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Kraken Launches Spot Margin Trading for US Clients

Retail users can now post crypto as collateral and trade with up to 10x leverage on Kraken Pro.

Kraken on Wednesday launched CFTC-regulated spot margin trading for U.S. retail clients on Kraken Pro, giving customers up to 10x leverage on long and short crypto positions with no accredited investor requirement.

Traders can post existing crypto holdings as collateral, view real-time risk metrics including liquidation prices and borrowing costs, and use 24/7 stop-loss functionality. Risk is isolated to the collateral allocated to each position rather than the entire portfolio. Eligibility is gated by state and customer criteria.

Kraken framed the rollout as closing a long-running gap in the U.S. market, where regulatory friction had pushed leveraged crypto traders toward offshore venues.

The product is offered through NinjaTrader Clearing, doing business as Kraken Derivatives US, a CFTC-registered Futures Commission Merchant, with financing provided by Payward Accredited LLC.

It is the first concrete result from Payward’s acquisition of Bitnomial, the Chicago derivatives firm Kraken agreed to buy in April. The deal, which closed Monday, hands Payward a full CFTC stack: a Futures Commission Merchant, a Designated Contract Market, and a Derivatives Clearing Organization. Kraken has said the infrastructure will underpin a broader push into regulated spot margin, perpetual futures, and options products for U.S. customers.

The launch comes as Kraken accelerates its push into regulated U.S. derivatives infrastructure ahead of a planned public listing. Co-CEO Arjun Sethi confirmed last month that the exchange has confidentially filed for an IPO, alongside a $200 million strategic investment from Deutsche Börse that valued Payward at roughly $13.3 billion.

This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.

Laka Acquires VeloLife’s Bike Insurance Business, Marking Its Fourth Acquisition as M&A Strategy Accelerates

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Laka Acquires VeloLife’s Bike Insurance Business, Marking Its Fourth Acquisition as M&A Strategy Accelerates

Laka, the award-winning UK & EU green mobility insurtech, today announces the acquisition of assets from VeloLife, the specialist cycle insurance provider. This marks Laka’s fourth acquisition in three years and the first public milestone in the active M&A pipeline that Laka signalled when it closed its £14.1 million Series B – which included a dedicated £6.5 million venture debt facility from HSBC Innovation Banking, secured specifically to fund strategic acquisitions.

The acquisition accelerates Laka’s footprint in the UK bike dealer channel. A cornerstone of this growth is a partnership with EPOS provider Citrus Lime, which allows Laka to embed its insurance products directly into the retail workflow of hundreds of independent bike shops – deepening Laka’s B2B2C model at the point of sale.

The M&A strategy, now in motion:

When Laka closed its Series B equity round of £7.6 million in July 2025, co-led by Shift4Good and MS&AD Ventures, the company signalled its intent to consolidate Europe’s highly fragmented micromobility insurance market through targeted acquisitions. 

That intent was reinforced in November 2025, when Laka secured a further £6.5 million venture debt facility from HSBC Innovation Banking – capital earmarked specifically for M&A. VeloLife is the first public announcement of that pipeline.

It follows the successful integration of three prior acquisitions: French e-bike insurance broker Cylantro (2023), CoverCloud’s UK bike insurance renewal rights (2024), and Luko’s e-scooter portfolio, acquired from Allianz Direct (2025). 

Each deal has added scale, geography, or capability to Laka’s platform – and VeloLife continues that pattern, bringing a curated network of more than 100 UK bike dealer locations into Laka’s partner ecosystem.

The urgency of this strategy is underlined by market fundamentals. By 2030, the global micromobility market is projected to more than double – from approximately $160 billion today to $340 billion, according to McKinsey. Europe is expected to be the largest regional contributor, growing from around $60 billion in 2022 to $140 billion by 2030. Yet insurance for this sector remains highly fragmented, and Laka’s disciplined acquisition strategy is designed to capture that consolidation opportunity.

Deepening the dealer ecosystem:

By integrating VeloLife’s dealer network, Laka continues to build a diverse B2B2C ecosystem that supports independent bike shops alongside its existing global brand partners, including Decathlon, Ribble, Gazelle, Riese & Müller, Tenways, and others. Licensed across the EEA and now operating in eleven countries, Laka has scaled from a UK direct-to-consumer insurer into a European platform insurer – and the dealer channel represents a significant growth vector for that next phase. 

To mark the transition, all VeloLife customers who migrate to Laka will receive their first 30 days of insurance free of charge.

Tobias Taupitz, CEO and Co-Founder of Laka, said: “This acquisition is a key milestone in our bike dealer strategy – and a clear signal that our M&A pipeline is now moving. VeloLife has built a fantastic set of partners, and we look forward to welcoming them to Laka’s network. When we raised our Series B and secured the HSBC debt facility, we were explicit that acquisition-led consolidation was central to our strategy. VeloLife is exactly the kind of deal that strategy was designed for.”

Justin Rodley, Director and Co-Founder of VeoLife, said: “We are delighted to be joining Laka. This new relationship is a very good fit for our ambition to launch into Europe and beyond. Most importantly, it was clear that Tobi and his team share our passion for quality service for the dealer network and customers. With Laka’s award-winning track record and strong brand, we are excited about what the future holds.”

 Dan Duran, Head of Marketing, Citrus Lime, commented:“Independent bike retailers are at the centre of everything we do, and partnerships that strengthen the services available through the dealer channel matter to us. Laka’s growth in the UK cycling market reflects a broader shift in how independent retailers are building more complete customer propositions. We look forward to seeing what this next phase brings.”

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