Update (March 26, 1:45 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include a comment from Florian Klein, commercial Web3 lead at Bitpanda.
Bitpanda said on Wednesday it is building Vision Chain, an Ethereum layer-2 intended to let European banks and fintechs issue and manage tokenized assets under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) and Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II).
The Austria-based broker said Vision Chain combines Optimism’s OP Stack with custody and compliance tooling, allowing regulated companies in Europe to tokenize and trade traditional assets such as stocks, bonds and funds on an Ethereum-based rollup.
It argued that this positioning, along with its existing bank partnerships in Germany and Austria, will make it easier for traditional institutions to go onchain than building their own infrastructure from scratch. Florian Klein, commercial Web3 lead at Bitpanda, told Cointelegraph that Bitpanda’s main selling point was its European regulatory moat, as well as owning the entire flow, from the retail broker to the assets, the chain (infrastructure) to the white-label (distribution) to other banks.
The company is also leaning on a broader macro case around asset tokenization. Market research company Mordor Intelligence estimated that the asset tokenization market will grow from around $2.08 trillion in 2025 to $13.55 trillion by 2030, implying a compound annual growth rate of roughly 45% as more real-world assets (RWAs) move onchain.
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Tokenization goes from crypto thesis to capital markets agenda
Vision Chain joins an increasingly crowded tokenization race that now includes trading names like Robinhood and incumbents such as Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange, which are piloting blockchain-based infrastructure and extended trading hours to attract more institutional flows.
Earlier this week, Nasdaq teamed up with Talos on a tokenized collateral platform that aims to unlock more than $35 billion of currently trapped collateral, while institutional networks like Canton are running live experiments with tokenized US Treasurys, money market funds and other RWAs for banks and market infrastructure giants.
Founded in Vienna in 2014, Bitpanda says it now serves over seven million users across Europe through its investing platform and B2B infrastructure offerings.
The company also presents itself as one of Europe’s most regulated crypto companies, though an International Consortium of Investigative Journalists-linked investigation published in January, citing internal documents and audit findings at Bitpanda’s German subsidiary, reported deficiencies including information security weaknesses and poor oversight of outsourced functions.
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