Blockrise CEO calls ‘anarchistic neobanks’ Bitcoin’s next frontier as crypto banking reshapes global markets

Bitcoin’s next big revolution lies in a new generation of “anarchistic neobanks” that have been dubbed by the founder of Blockrise, Jos Lazet, as reported by The Block. He said this as a growing number of crypto-native banks and financial platforms challenge the traditional banking model and change the way digital assets flow through the global economy.

Industry observers describe these platforms as “composable” financial services, where banking, payments, custody, compliance, and blockchain settlement are delivered through separate infrastructure providers rather than a single institution.

As Cryptopolitan previously reported, many emerging platforms rely on partnerships between licensed banks, stablecoin issuers, and blockchain-based payment networks to offer banking-like services without operating as full-service banks themselves.

Lazet’s statements emerge as bitcoin’s market infrastructure begins its structural shift. Crypto neobanks, which provide banking-like functionality with transaction settlements happening on blockchain networks, have managed to raise billions of dollars in investments and acquire millions of users within the last year alone.

This growth is causing Bitcoin to become more integrated within the traditional financial system, leading to a change in how regulated banking will deal with decentralization.

Blockrise and bunq bring regulated banking services to Bitcoin users

Lazet’s Blockrise, a Bitcoin-only platform founded in 2017, partnered with European neobank bunq in April 2026 to offer bank accounts embedded directly inside a Bitcoin platform.

The fiat money kept within the service is insured by the Dutch Deposit Guarantee Scheme up to a total of €100,000 via bunq’s European banking license

“Up to now, Dutch Bitcoin users had to choose between security and convenience. With bunq’s infrastructure, they get both,” Lazet said in the announcement. Blockrise is the first company to build on bunq’s new Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform, which provides compliance, security, and API access to third-party fintech partners.

This setup makes it possible for Blockrise to provide full banking services alongside Bitcoin trading, asset management, and Bitcoin lending services it currently offers without getting their own banking license. This strategy is common in crypto finance industry players nowadays, who partner with BaaS providers and licensed banks rather than acquiring banking licenses.

This allows crypto companies to focus on customer-facing products while outsourcing deposit protection, compliance requirements, and payment infrastructure to licensed institutions.

Blockrise currently possesses a MiCAR license from the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM).

Global expansion of crypto neobanks amid advances in stablecoin infrastructure

The Blockrise-bunq partnership is just an example of this trend. Founded in 2023, Hong-Kong based crypto payments provider RedotPay has reached over five million customers in over 100 countries and about $10 billion worth of transaction volume annually, as mentioned by Kaupr.

The company raised $47 million from Coinbase Ventures, Galaxy Ventures, and Vertex Ventures in September 2025, reaching unicorn status.

There are also other entrants who have taken up a different stance. Plasma One focuses on dollar-hungry cities such as Istanbul, Buenos Aires, and Dubai by using Visa-licensed cards along with earning on stablecoin deposits.

Similarly, Gnosis Pay offers its users a Visa debit card where the funds are tied to the user’s own cryptocurrency wallets with no third-party holding it.

On the other hand, in Europe, Deblock from France uses a French IBAN in conjunction with a non-custodial crypto wallet that functions under both an electronic money institution license and France’s MiCA license, as per Kaupr.

Although the market is growing rapidly, infrastructure analysis points out the significant difference in the amount of trust associated with these business models.

While some of the firms provide a traditional bank-like experience and services, there are others that emphasize self-custody along with direct transactions through cryptocurrency wallets.

This divergence suggests that the “neobank” label is becoming too broad, covering both bank-like intermediaries and wallet-centric financial interfaces that operate with fundamentally different risk structures.

However, the infrastructure behind such platforms has developed very quickly. Stripe bought stablecoin payments company, Bridge, for $1.1 billion in October 2024, and Mastercard entered into an agreement to purchase BVNK in up to $1.8 billion deal, reported by Inco.

Despite growing transaction volumes, industry experts observe the fact that the adoption of stablecoins is gradually shifting away from trading and into customer-oriented financial services.

Crypto neobanking becomes one of the key players where stablecoin infrastructure is used in the sphere of everyday transactions, money transfers, and accounts management, helping bridge the gap between blockchain-based settlement and traditional financial experiences.

In 2025, stablecoin transaction volume was estimated at $33 trillion, a 72% increase compared to last year’s numbers and exceeding Visa’s fiscal year performance, which amounted to $16.7 trillion.

Regulation driving Bitcoin’s integration into banking systems

Cryptopolitan has previously reported on Bitcoin’s evolving role as institutional and retail infrastructure converges around it. The crypto neobank trend accelerates that convergence by embedding bitcoin access into regulated banking products rather than keeping it siloed in exchange accounts.

The regulatory environment has shifted to accommodate the trend. The GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, established a US federal framework for payment stablecoin issuance covering reserves, redemption, and issuer supervision, according to Inco.

In Europe, MiCA has been fully operational since December 2024, giving licensed firms passporting rights across the EU.

Traditional institutions are moving in the same direction. Société Générale launched a dollar-pegged stablecoin, BBVA confirmed plans for a euro-pegged stablecoin in 2026, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority issued its first stablecoin licenses to HSBC and an Anchorpoint Financial joint venture with Standard Chartered in April 2026, according to Inco. Coinbase, PayPal, Revolut, and Kraken have all pursued banking or trust licenses.

For bitcoin markets specifically, these developments create new on-ramps and holding patterns. When a platform like Blockrise can offer deposit-guaranteed bank accounts alongside bitcoin services, the friction between fiat and crypto shrinks. That kind of integration tends to pull more retail capital into bitcoin markets and keep it there longer.

How crypto neobanks could accelerate Bitcoin’s mainstream adoption

Whether Lazet’s “anarchistic” framing catches on remains to be seen. The platforms gaining the most traction so far have done so by wrapping crypto rails in conventional banking protections rather than rejecting regulation outright.

As stablecoin infrastructure, BaaS platforms, and digital asset regulations continue to mature, the next test will be whether crypto-native banking models can scale beyond early adopters and compete for the mainstream users already served by neobanks such as Revolut and Chime. Their success could determine how deeply bitcoin and other digital assets become embedded in everyday financial activity.

At the same time, a key open question remains whether these hybrid systems preserve Bitcoin’s original decentralization ethos or gradually reintroduce centralized control through banking intermediaries.

While user experience is becoming more seamless, the backend architecture is trending toward regulated consolidation, where a small number of licensed institutions anchor most crypto-financial activity.

 

 

The smartest crypto minds already read our newsletter. Want in? Join them.