Monerium: Why regulated money belongs onchain

In Episode 5 of Range Stablecoin Fireside, Paula Pettit, VP of Strategy and Growth at Range, speaks with Sveinn Valfells, one of Monerium's co-founders. Their conversation starts with a basic design question: if regular money is placed on a blockchain, how closely can it behave like the money already used in bank accounts, payment systems and everyday commerce?

Valfells traces Monerium's answer back to the European e-money framework. The company chose a regulated form of digital cash, connected it to the main euro payment system and then built toward familiar uses such as card spending, lending and currency exchange. His route into the question began much earlier, with a background in physics and cryptography, an encounter with Bitcoin in 2011 and the 2008 global financial crisis, which hit Iceland and London, where he was living at the time. The result is an argument about more than a euro token. Range reads this as a view of how regulated money can move between bank and blockchain rails without becoming a separate financial world.

Monerium starts with money, not an exchange product

Monerium began by asking how money on a blockchain could stay as close as possible to official money. Valfells said the team found its starting point in Europe's e-money regime, a framework already used for prepaid cards, mobile wallets and online commerce by companies including PayPal, TransferWise and Revolut. That gave Monerium an existing regulatory form for digital cash rather than a new token category that needed to be explained from scratch. The team began speaking with regulators in Europe in 2018 and 2019, with its home regulator in Iceland and the FCA receptive to the idea.

The distinction becomes concrete at issuance and redemption. Monerium's euro is intended to be fungible one for one with other euros, including cash and bank deposits. Its sterling version follows the same basic design in another currency, backed by sterling high-quality liquid assets and bank accounts. Instead of making an exchange the primary route into the asset, Monerium integrated its issuance management system with SEPA. Valfells explained the operating model directly: "So using our service, you can move a euro from any European bank account to a blockchain wallet and back without going through any exchanges or any ramps."

That connection changes the role of the blockchain. The user is not buying a separate instrument before making a payment. The euro moves from a bank account to a wallet and can return through the banking system. As Valfells put it, "It just moves back and forth on chain, off chain, just like regular money moves between banks."

Range's view is that this is the useful test for stablecoin infrastructure: can a company operate across fiat and stablecoins as one financial system? Range starts with regulatory and reporting requirements, translates them into operational controls, orchestrates the risk and compliance providers a company already uses, then runs monitoring, reconciliation and reporting from the same record. A new rail creates value when finance teams can see the same money, counterparties and obligations across both environments. The token matters, but the operating model around issuance, redemption, reconciliation and control determines whether it can function as money inside a business.

Regulation becomes part of the payment architecture

Valfells describes regulation as structural to Monerium's model. A regulated issuer has obligations around money laundering controls, consumer protection and data protection. Those requirements create work for the issuer, but they also establish the basis on which it can interact with banks and payment service providers. Monerium's integration with SEPA followed from its status as a compliant institution, not from a technical connection alone.

That position also shapes how Valfells reads MiCA. E-money was already established in Europe before MiCA, and his view is that MiCA makes that framework the required path for stablecoin issuance in the region while adding further requirements for e-money on blockchains. He accepts the core rationale even where he disagrees with parts of the implementation. Valfells summarized the principle: "money needs to be regulated to prevent money laundering, to prevent fraud, etcetera."

The same principle informs Monerium's response to the GENIUS Act. Valfells sees the US framework as a way to support legitimate dollar stablecoins and expand their use beyond crypto speculation. He describes the dollar as the world's reserve currency, which makes sound forms of regulated dollar stablecoins important even as other currencies gain onchain adoption. He also argues that US adoption has already helped European companies and users understand cross-border payment use cases. Monerium has therefore kept a steady focus on regulated money and mainstream uses rather than changing course in response to newer legislation.

Range is the platform for companies operating across stablecoins and fiat. Our view is that regulation must be an input to day-to-day financial operations rather than a separate review after money has moved. That makes the rules governing an asset inseparable from how a company approves transactions, manages counterparties and produces evidence for review.

Onchain money earns adoption through use

Monerium's integrations follow a simple account of what money is for: it can be held, spent, lent and exchanged. Earlier experiments included settling euro invoices in supply-chain transactions, although Valfells said that use case had not yet taken off. Card spending has gained more traction. The company has worked with Gnosis Pay and MetaMask on debit cards powered by onchain euros and sterling. For a European user, that means applying for a card and spending the linked money through familiar Visa or Mastercard acceptance rather than keeping it inside a blockchain wallet.

Lending adds another use. Valfells described a Spanish company using Monerium's euros for automated borrowing and lending. Exchange is the next part of the model, including work on opening access to onchain foreign exchange. Valfells kept the framing deliberately narrow: "The money is a means of exchange." It is not presented as equity or an interest-bearing security, but as cash used to transfer value.

That matters for cross-border payments. Valfells argues that foreign exchange underpins global commerce and that a transaction between two non-dollar currencies should not have to pass through a dollar stablecoin in the middle. Direct exchange between regulated onchain currencies could remove that intermediate step. Monerium has also been testing exchanges between euros and real-world assets with partners in a closed beta, although Valfells did not disclose the details.

Range's view is that more usable forms of onchain money increase the need for consistent operations across every rail. Card spending, lending and foreign exchange create different transaction records, counterparties and control points even when the underlying money is the same. For teams using Range, a single ledger across wallets, custodians, exchanges and bank accounts provides the context to reconcile those activities, apply policy and preserve an audit-ready record without treating each integration as a separate treasury.

Blockchain changes finance without removing every bank

Valfells expects blockchains and regulatory evolution to change financial services together. He points to two properties of blockchains: they can reduce the number of intermediaries involved in holding and sending money, and they are built on open standards that allow a large part of innovation to happen without prior permission. In Valfells's words, this combination can create "new types of services that we have not envisaged". The outcome could be positive or negative depending on how those services are built, but he expects the structure of financial services to change.

The likely effect is a shift in the relative importance of today's banks and payment providers, not their immediate disappearance. New institutions can emerge with more efficient and flexible services, while banks continue to play an important role in lending and credit creation. Valfells was clear on the point: "I don't think banks are gonna go away anytime soon." Their role in storing and sending money may become less central even if their role in credit remains.

That is why he favors an evolution that preserves what matters in the existing financial system. His experience of Iceland's 2008 financial collapse informs the caution: financial services are critical infrastructure, and sudden institutional failure has consequences far beyond the companies involved. The objective is not disruption for its own sake, but a change in who can provide financial services and how efficiently those services can operate.

The timeline is correspondingly long. Bitcoin established peer-to-peer value exchange and an alternative asset class, while Ethereum and newer blockchain designs expanded the set of possible applications. Valfells points to activity across Stellar, Solana, Base and Gnosis Chain, as well as a blockchain designed for financial institutions and a separate privacy-preserving blockchain, as evidence that the design space is still moving. He expects development to continue across technologies, institutions and jurisdictions. Valfells said, "I think it's going to unfold in waves over decades," and closed with an equally practical message: "it's never too late to join."

Build stablecoin operations around control

Monerium's model shows how issuance, regulation, bank connectivity and everyday use have to work together before onchain money can support mainstream finance. Range's view is that companies operating across these rails need one control layer that turns requirements into policy, coordinates existing providers and keeps monitoring, reconciliation and reporting connected to the same financial record.

See how Range supports stablecoin operations.

About Monerium

Monerium issues and redeems regulated e-money on public blockchains through EURe, its euro-denominated electronic money token. Its wallet-linked IBAN and API connect bank transfers with onchain wallets for payments and application integrations. Monerium is an authorized electronic money institution supervised by the Financial Supervisory Authority of the Central Bank of Iceland; learn more at monerium.com.

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