Five years ago today, we began our journey with the founding of Notabene.
At the time, FATF had just introduced the Travel Rule for crypto – the first globally coordinated regulatory framework for digital asset transactions. We immediately realized that the Travel Rule wasn’t just a compliance requirement, but rather the first step in achieving global regulatory clarity. Our experience in crypto gave us the foresight to see that this regulatory clarity would one day be a turning point for the entire industry, allowing crypto to truly scale and become a part of the everyday economy. We knew that for digital assets to move beyond speculation and into real-world utility, they needed the same infrastructure and safeguards that traditional global finance relies on – without losing the openness that makes crypto transformative.
In response to FATF’s Travel Rule, a fragmented ecosystem emerged. Implementation of the Travel Rule was made difficult by multiple competing closed protocols, lack of clarity from various jurisdictions, and mismatched timeframes for the rollout of regional rules – often referred to as the Sunrise Period. While most saw it as an impossible challenge, we saw it for what it was: the unlock for integrating crypto into the global economy. So we leaned in.
Our key innovation in solving the Travel Rule problem was to build open infrastructure to facilitate counterparty trust at scale. We did this with an open protocol (TAP) and a best-in-class pre-transaction authorization platform. By embedding trust into every transaction for our customers, we created the largest active network of regulated crypto institutions in the world, trusted by leading financial institutions at the forefront of crypto, from retail exchanges and on/off ramps, to custody infrastructure providers, and payment service providers across more than 95 jurisdictions across the globe. We’ve supported nearly $1 trillion in Travel-Rule compliant transaction volume and helped define the industry standard for secure, trusted, scalable compliance.
But our ambition was never limited to innovating in the compliance and RegTech space. From the start, we saw the Travel Rule as a gateway — the first step toward the regulatory clarity needed to drive crypto adoption across the entire financial ecosystem.
Fast-forward to today, and our prediction is coming true. Regulatory clarity is finally arriving. In the EU, APAC, Latin America, and now the US, we are seeing true clarity and support emerge from governments and regulators. As predicted, this is building momentum in the industry as traditional financial institutions mature their digital asset strategies, core infrastructure is built, and consumer adoption of stablecoins continues to skyrocket. The building blocks are nearly all in place: regulation, infrastructure, product-market fit.
Trust is the final missing piece.
Regulatory compliance is key, but isn’t enough on its own. Counterparties don’t exchange value with each other simply because they are allowed to, they do it because they want to. They do it when they have the confidence to transact with each other in a safe and secure manner. Without real trust between counterparties, nothing scales – not institutional adoption, and not consumer adoption.
The next generation of financial infrastructure isn’t just about speed or scale. It’s about trust.
And so we will continue to evolve — expanding our work beyond compliance to help build the trust layer for global money movement. This will be the core financial infrastructure that enables institutions to verify counterparties, authorize transactions, and unlock new markets — with trust embedded from the start. It’s the foundation that will make our vision a reality.
The building blocks are in place. The opportunity is enormous. And we’re just getting started.
We’re proud of what we’ve built, and even more excited to keep building it alongside our customers and partners.
To everyone who’s helped us get here, thank you.
Here’s to the first five years of Notabene — and to everything ahead.
–Pelle and Alice, Co-Founders, Notabene
