The Big Whale

The research team of The Big Whale publishes reports and benchmarks on how European financial institutions adopt digital assets. The benchmark on French banks, fintechs and asset managers of April 2026 surveyed around twenty players: every bank in the sample raised its digital asset budget, about 300 positions were open across the banking sector, 45 percent of them in compliance, and most institutions named tokenized money market funds as their first tokenization priority. The study also contains an onchain analysis of EURCV, the euro stablecoin of SG-Forge.

The German edition of June 2026 asked decision-makers at 22 banks and fintechs in Germany, which the report calls the largest crypto market in Europe with 4.9 million users and 54 CASP licenses. In that survey 78 percent saw tokenization as the future of finance, and 44 percent named the integration of legacy systems as their main obstacle. A September 2026 benchmark on the digital asset budgets of 22 European banks and providers expects that market to reach about 700 million euros by 2027.

Earlier reports dealt with the tokenization barometer of 2025, bitcoin treasury companies, crypto derivatives and the convergence of DeFi with traditional finance. Grégory Raymond, Maxime Coniglio and Aleksandar Bukovski wrote the 2026 benchmarks.

The weekly briefing of The Big Whale arrives every Wednesday by email and carries editorial coverage, analysis of selected news and interviews with leaders of the digital asset sector. Articles appear in four sections named business, finance, regulation and technology, and in formats such as scoops, analyses, op-eds and interviews. Interviews in 2026 included executives of Janus Henderson, BitGo, Fireblocks, Deutsche Bank and Circle.

Reader subscriptions of 25 euros a month financed The Big Whale during the early years, when The Big Whale operated without advertising or sponsorship. Today The Big Whale sells annual company plans with access for the whole organization and one, up to five or up to ten strategic users, and none to individuals.

The Big Whale covers crypto markets from the angle of institutional investors, with a Monday market brief on bitcoin and a market debrief on Fridays. Lead analyst Aleksandar Bukovski writes on stablecoins, tokenized finance, DeFi protocols and bitcoin mining and hosts the recurring Market Call. Scoops in 2026 dealt with France as the last MiCA option of Binance in Europe and with a euro yield product that the French app Bitstack launched with Spiko and the asset manager Amundi.

The Geneva Summit is the two-day conference of The Big Whale for 300 selected decision-makers from banks, asset managers, payment networks and supervisors, held at the Hotel President Wilson in Geneva under the Chatham House Rule. The Geneva Summit program covers six fields: regulation from MiCA to Basel III and DORA, stablecoins and cross-border settlement, custody, the tokenization of real assets, AI agents in regulated finance and the capital strategy of institutions.

Speakers come from firms such as Fidelity International, Franklin Templeton, SG-Forge, CACEIS and Ripple, and corporate members of The Big Whale get priority access. Paris Europlace, the Crypto Valley Association, the Geneva Chamber of Commerce and the Capital Markets and Technology Association support the summit in the financial center of Geneva.

Corporate members of The Big Whale meet through a closed Corporate Breakfast series across financial centers, with each room capped at 90 senior executives under the Chatham House Rule. A panel from the newsroom opens each gathering, and 2026 topics ranged from onchain cash management for treasurers in Paris to the digital asset services that banks need in Milan. Editions in Miami and Las Vegas took the format outside Europe, while the published program also includes Abu Dhabi.

The Big Whale also runs the online Future of Finance series and recurring Market Calls, which are separate from the two-day Geneva Summit. The Big Whale reports a network of 4,500 opt-in decision-makers and more than 1,000 people met in person over 18 months, with 72 percent from the C-suite or senior leadership. Recent speakers came from J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, BNY, Worldline, Coinbase and Qivalis, the euro stablecoin joint venture of European banks.

Raphaël Bloch is chief executive and co-founder of The Big Whale and covered financial markets for Reuters before he wrote for Les Echos and L'Express. Dimitri Granger is co-founder and chief operating officer; his earlier role was managing director of Publicis Consulting. Grégory Raymond, who has covered digital-asset regulation and technology since 2017 and wrote Bitcoin & Cryptos: L'enjeu du siècle, co-founded The Big Whale and led research and editorial work at The Big Whale until leaving his operational roles in October 2026, while remaining a shareholder and supporter.

The current team at The Big Whale includes Maxime Coniglio as head of market intelligence, Hugo Panczak as head of agentic AI, Arthur Weis as head of product, Aleksandar Bukovski as lead analyst and Noé Giglio in strategic partnerships and private events. Raphaël Bloch stated in October 2026 that The Big Whale was profitable, employed ten people across five countries and served more than 150 institutional clients.

The MiCA mapping of The Big Whale tracks crypto-asset service providers and issuers of e-money tokens and asset-referenced tokens that hold an authorization under MiCA, filtered by country, sector and origin. The MiCA mapping shows banks such as Deutsche Bank next to crypto-native firms, so that a user can check the CASP license of a counterparty.

Together with the DEC Institute, The Big Whale offers two certification paths that follow the ESMA guidelines on knowledge and competence: MIC with 80 hours for staff who inform clients about crypto-assets and MAC with 160 hours for advisers. Crypto-asset service providers in the EU had to meet these staff requirements by 28 July 2026.

The Big Whale SAS was registered in Paris on 18 March 2022 under company number 911 651 859 and maintains an office at 9 rue des Colonnes in the 2nd arrondissement. The company terms still identify Grégory Raymond as president and publication director. The French business register retains Grégory Raymond as president, with Raphaël Bloch and Dimitri Granger as managing directors and share capital of 43,250 euros. Grégory Raymond announced in October 2026 that he had left the presidency and editorial management, so the published legal records had not yet reflected that operational change when this page was reviewed.