Nikou Asgari

Nikou Asgari is the Financial Times’ digital markets correspondent, covering the intersection of cryptocurrency and traditional capital markets. Her reporting focuses on trading venues, market structure and exchanges, tracing how digital assets plug into the existing financial system rather than treating crypto as a separate niche. She brings a markets and deals background to stories about crypto, following the money through banks, listed companies, and policy decisions that shape the future of digital finance.

Digital markets and crypto exchanges

Asgari’s core beat is digital markets, concentrating on trading, exchanges and the link between crypto and established financial infrastructure. She writes about market structure and how traditional exchanges and crypto platforms compete and converge, covering both digital asset venues and long-standing bourses.

Her work includes breaking news on major crypto firms and market operators, including FTX, Binance, DCG and Crypto.com, as well as traditional groups such as CBOE and Euronext. She has reported extensively on the collapse of FTX and its aftermath, examining how its failure rippled through global markets and prompted scrutiny of crypto exchanges and their risk controls.

Beyond headline events, she follows ongoing developments in digital trading infrastructure, documenting how new protocols and platforms try to challenge incumbent systems.

Her coverage also extends into the technology and networks that underpin crypto activity. In a profile of the programmer behind the Nostr protocol, she explores attempts to build decentralised social and communication tools as alternatives to large platforms, connecting them back to Bitcoin’s technical and ideological roots. Across these stories, she combines company-focused reporting with an eye on how plumbing and rules in markets are changing, helping readers understand where digital assets fit in the broader trading ecosystem.

Wall Street, banks and stablecoins

A recurring thread in Asgari’s work is the contest between Wall Street institutions and crypto companies over the future of money and payments. She reports on how US banks and digital asset groups jockey for influence over payment rails and deposits, and on the strategic choices they make as crypto technologies move closer to mainstream finance.

In coverage of stablecoins, she explains their structure as digital tokens tied to conventional currencies and sets out why their speed and lower costs appeal to supporters.

She details the regulatory frameworks built around these instruments, including landmark legislation and how rules shape banks’ willingness to issue or handle stablecoins. Her reporting highlights concerns inside large financial institutions about systemic risks, competition for deposits and the possibility that crypto-native firms could erode their role in payments.

Asgari also follows the political dimension of crypto’s rise. In a discussion of the idea of “America’s first Bitcoin president”, she reports on appointments to key regulatory agencies, the enthusiasm of parts of an administration for crypto, and the way senior figures seek to position the country as a hub for digital assets. She tracks how regulatory choices and enforcement or tolerance toward crypto businesses influence market sentiment and corporate strategy, connecting political decisions directly to market behaviour.

Through these stories, she shows how crypto policy is made not just in securities or banking agencies, but also in the broader contests around economic and technological leadership.

Corporate bets and balance-sheet crypto

Another focus of Asgari’s reporting is how companies use their balance sheets and capital markets access to take large positions in crypto, and what happens when those bets collide with volatile prices. She has documented how businesses across sectors, from biotech to electric vehicles, raised substantial sums through debt and equity issuance specifically to acquire cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether, along with more niche tokens.

Her reporting shows these strategies as attempts to boost share prices by stockpiling digital assets, and follows how those plans unwind when market conditions turn and investors question the wisdom of such exposure. In this context she covers companies that become de facto crypto investment vehicles, and she analyses the impact on shareholders when enthusiasm for digital assets fades.

Her work includes scrutiny of high-profile investors and companies whose backing encourages corporate crypto accumulation, such as coverage of Cathie Wood’s bet on a football group that turned into a significant crypto hoarder and saw that strategy backfire. She places these stories within a broader pattern of corporate experiments with digital assets, comparing them with more conservative treasury policies and highlighting the governance questions raised when management pursues aggressive crypto strategies.

The through-line is a focus on how capital raising, investor expectations and crypto exposure interact inside listed companies, and what that reveals about the maturity of the market.

Background in markets, deals and pharmaceuticals

Asgari’s current beat is built on several earlier reporting roles at the Financial Times, all centred on business and markets coverage.

She has reported on corporate finance and debt, covering European stock and bond markets and personal finance, giving her a grounding in how companies fund themselves and how investors respond. She later moved to reporting on US mergers and acquisitions, including transactions executed through special purpose acquisition companies, and on the US pharmaceutical industry during the coronavirus pandemic.

This work involved following vaccine makers and healthcare groups through an intense period of scientific development, regulation and dealmaking, while also tracking the capital flows that supported them.

She has worked at the Financial Times since 2018, progressing from general markets and corporate finance coverage to specialist beats before taking on digital markets as her focus. That progression gives her a broad perspective on how crypto fits into longer-established markets, enabling her to connect digital assets to subjects such as bond issuance, equity offerings, M&A and sector-specific corporate strategies.

Her current work draws on that experience to explain how crypto is reshaping trading venues, balance sheets and regulatory debates, rather than treating it in isolation.