Robbie Nakarmi is a venture capital investor and corporate lawyer specializing in digital assets, blockchain, and technology investments. His career has combined legal, investment, and venture capital roles across law firms, cryptocurrency companies, and financial institutions. He has advised on mergers and acquisitions, venture capital transactions, and digital asset investments, and has held leadership positions at Binance, Standard Chartered, and other organizations focused on emerging technologies. ^[4]

Education

Nakarmi graduated from the University of Auckland with a BCom in International Business and Management in 2006. He later earned his LLB from the University of Sydney in 2010. ^[3]

Career

Nakarmi began his career with internships at Samsung Electronics in South Korea and Booz & Company, where he worked on projects related to digital marketing and corporate strategy. He joined MinterEllison in 2008 as a summer articled clerk before entering the firm's graduate lawyer program, rotating through banking and finance, private equity and capital markets, and mergers and acquisitions. After qualifying as a lawyer in 2011, he practiced in the firm's mergers and acquisitions team until 2013.

In 2014, Nakarmi joined White & Case as an Associate, advising clients on corporate and mergers and acquisitions transactions across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, including a secondment to the Government of Dubai's tourism department. He moved to Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in 2016, where he focused on venture capital, private equity, and mergers and acquisitions across the EMEA region, before joining Hogan Lovells in 2018 to continue advising technology companies on corporate and venture capital transactions.

Nakarmi entered the digital asset industry in 2021 when he joined Binance as Senior Counsel for mergers and acquisitions and investments, while also serving as legal counsel for Binance Labs, the company's venture capital arm. His work included advising on seed

• and Series A-stage investments involving equity, tokens, convertible notes, SAFEs, SAFTs, and token warrants, as well as supporting portfolio companies and contributing to the fundraising of Binance Labs Fund II. In 2023, he briefly served as Managing Associate at Simmons & Simmons, advising digital asset and cryptocurrency clients on venture capital investments, while also working as an independent angel investor focused on blockchain, decentralized finance (DeFi), and artificial intelligence startups.

In 2024, Nakarmi joined Standard Chartered as Investment Director and Fund Manager for its Digital Asset Fund, a venture capital investment vehicle established in collaboration with SBI Digital Assets, SBI Holdings, and SBI Venture Capital Asia. In this role, he oversaw venture capital investments in blockchain and digital asset companies through the fund's investment activities. ^{[2] [1]}

Panel

Banking with Stablecoins

In a July 2025 panel at the Tokenized Capital Summit alongside Shubham Bhandari of Manta, David Shengart of Not Alone Ventures, Lee Pickavance of MV Global, Alberto Olarte of Wise3, and Jemma Xu of Fork Ventures, Nakarmi discussed the role of blockchain infrastructure, stablecoins, and tokenization in the evolution of financial markets. Nakarmi highlighted blockchain’s ability to improve payment systems through faster, cheaper, and more efficient transactions, describing stablecoins such as USDT and USDC as critical infrastructure connecting traditional finance with crypto markets and enabling activities such as trading, DeFi, and on

• and off-ramp services. He noted that stablecoins backed by assets such as U.S. Treasuries could play a broader role in financial markets by supporting government debt markets and serving as settlement infrastructure for tokenized real-world assets including bonds and private credit. Nakarmi also discussed growing institutional interest in digital assets, including Standard Chartered’s exploration of tokenization and stablecoin-related initiatives, and emphasized that banks increasingly recognize blockchain’s potential to improve settlement speed and operational efficiency. He noted that while some institutions have explored proprietary blockchain networks, the industry continues to evaluate the benefits of open, public blockchains and their permissionless design. ^[5]