Dear readers,

This Wednesday we look at one of the more interesting questions facing Southeast Europe's innovation ecosystem: can tokenization finally help bridge the region's long-standing capital gap? Through a conversation with T-Blocks co-founder Henri Ndreca, we explore why blockchain alone isn't enough, how Luxembourg is becoming a gateway for cross-border investment, and why diaspora capital could be one of the region's biggest untapped opportunities.

We also unpack a growing sentiment among founders and investors that even the region's most mature startup ecosystems are beginning to lose momentum, prompting an increasing number of entrepreneurs to establish a US presence much earlier in their journey.

Finally, we share a top marketer’s take on why many SEE startups still struggle to tell compelling stories despite building world-class products, and what founders can learn from Silicon Valley about turning technical excellence into narratives that attract customers, investors, and attention.

Happy reading!
Bojan Stojkovski
Editor-in-Chief, IT Logs

For years, Southeast Europe has faced the same structural problem: the region has valuable assets, ambitious entrepreneurs and investment opportunities, but connecting those opportunities with global capital remains difficult.

Across the Balkans, companies are building real estate projects, renewable energy developments, infrastructure projects and businesses with international potential. Yet many of these opportunities still rely on local banks, domestic investors or rare diaspora financing because international investors often hesitate to enter markets they do not know well.

In recent years, blockchain and tokenization have often been presented as a possible solution for this challenge. By representing ownership rights in an asset as a digital token, the technology promises to make investments easier to distribute and potentially open access to new groups of investors.

However, Henri Ndreca, co-founder of Luxembourg-based digital investment infrastructure company T-Blocks, believes the industry has learned an important lesson after several years of experimentation: technology is not the first step. “The main thing that the region needs is more financial structures rather than tokenization,” Ndreca says, beginning his own story of why he is in this business today.

Ndreca has followed the evolution of blockchain from its early days, when the technology was mostly associated with cryptocurrencies and speculation, to the current phase where banks, asset managers and institutional investors are exploring how digital infrastructure can reshape financial markets.

His interest in the space started before tokenization became a mainstream topic. He was among the early voices discussing crypto-economics in Albania, authoring one of the country’s first academic theses on the topic and later translating The Bitcoin Standard into Albanian, one of the first major books about cryptocurrency and monetary systems available in the language. He also co-founded Crypto Friends Podcast, one of Albania’s first Web3 educational platforms, and has advised startups, regulators and digital finance initiatives across the region.

Today, through T-Blocks, Ndreca is focused on a different application of blockchain: using it as infrastructure to help emerging-market assets reach international investors.

The company started with a focus on Albania and the Balkans, aiming to help local asset managers, developers and businesses create investment products that could reach international investors. Now, it provides infrastructure for structuring, issuing and distributing financial instruments, combining traditional finance with blockchain-based distribution channels.

However, its experience in the region changed the way it looked at tokenization. The original assumption was that blockchain could solve the capital access problem directly. Instead, the company discovered that the bigger challenge was building trust.

For T-Blocks, Luxembourg became a critical part of the model because of its reputation as one of the world’s strongest jurisdictions for cross-border investments and financial products. “We chose Luxembourg because it is the best cross-border capital jurisdiction in the world. This is where financial transactions happen,” he explains.

The idea is relatively simple: global investors are often reluctant to invest directly into a local special-purpose vehicle or project in a smaller emerging market. But if that same opportunity is structured through a recognised financial jurisdiction, supported by compliance processes, auditors and established institutions, it becomes easier to evaluate.

This has become one of the biggest lessons for T-Blocks. “The foundation in everything that we do with all countries is: do you have a legal structure in a trusted jurisdiction? Do you have that sense of credibility that global investors, foreign allocators, family offices and funds want?” Ndreca recalls.

From crypto speculation to institutional finance

The change in T-Blocks thinking shows a broader change happening across the blockchain industry.

For years, blockchain was mostly associated with cryptocurrencies, speculative investments and digital assets disconnected from traditional finance. During the 2021 and 2022 boom, thousands of projects raised money through token sales, while venture investors poured billions into blockchain infrastructure.

Much of that activity, however, failed to create sustainable value. Ndreca believes the industry has now entered a different phase, where the focus is moving away from speculation and towards financial applications with real-world use cases.

That perception influenced how T-Blocks approached companies and the startup eventually changed its messaging. “We started to not mention tokenization at all towards clients.” Our language was about gathering capital, raising money for projects, and structuring it in Luxembourg.”

The wider market, however, began changing rapidly as major financial institutions entered the space. “When BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton and all the big companies started talking about tokenization, it changed the credibility of the industry,” Ndreca says.

The biggest signal was that some of the world’s largest asset managers were no longer discussing blockchain as an experiment, but as a new layer for financial infrastructure. Today, the first wave of tokenization is focused on assets that already have strong demand and established markets.

The next stage, Ndreca believes, will be much more ambitious. “Later, down the risk curve, you get more exotic assets from non-US markets (for example, the Balkans, from Saudi Arabia, from Africa and other emerging markets),” he says.

This is where SEE could eventually become relevant. Many assets in the region are considered too small, too complex or too unfamiliar for international investors. Tokenization could create another distribution layer, but only if the underlying financial structures already exist. The lesson from the last few years is that blockchain does not replace traditional finance, but instead extends it.

Southeast Europe’s diaspora capital opportunity

One of the biggest opportunities for the Balkans could come from diaspora capital.

Countries such as Albania, Kosovo and N. Macedonia have millions of citizens living abroad. While many of them maintain economic connections with their home countries, converting that connection into investment has historically been difficult.

The challenge is not only finding investors, but creating investment opportunities they trust. T-Blocks experienced this first-hand in Albania. Last year, the company presented its model to Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, the country’s minister of economy and around 50 real estate developers.

Furthermore, he notes that the meeting showed that local businesses need to think beyond individual projects and focus on financial architecture. “The Prime Minister understood very quickly that developers need to think about financial structures. Without having these international structures, it is very hard to attract money.”

Following that meeting, T-Blocks evaluated several projects and selected one developer for a pilot. The company helped structure a process that allowed diaspora investors to participate in a real estate development in southern Albania.

The experience reinforced an important point: tokenization is not a replacement for financial systems, but it functions as an additional tool built on top of them. For the Balkans, Ndreca believes diaspora mobilisation could become one of the strongest use cases. “The biggest value tokenization can bring is diaspora mobilisation of capital.”

Blockchain’s second act will be built on utility

Looking at the evolution of blockchain over the past several years, Ndreca believes the industry has reached a turning point. The speculative era is fading, while practical applications are becoming more important.

For SEE, that could mean a gradual shift in how companies think about raising capital and how investors access opportunities. However, the region still needs preparation.

Ndreca believes only a small number of companies in the Balkans are currently ready for institutional tokenization. “You can count the companies that are fit for this kind of innovation with one hand. There are not many companies that have the corporate structures, governance, boards, cash-flow transparency and reporting,” he adds. 

The opportunity exists, but it will not happen overnight. While tokenization will not magically solve SEE’s investment challenges, it could become another layer of infrastructure that helps trusted assets reach investors who were previously unable to access them.

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