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Coinme Acquired by Polygon Labs to Build its Open Money Stack
Coinme Acquired by Polygon Labs to Build its Open Money Stack

Transaction Overview
On January 13th, 2026, Polygon Labs announced it intends to acquire Coinme, a regulated crypto-as-a-service provider. Simultaneously, Polygon also announced the acquisition of Sequence, enabling payment flows across blockchain networks. Both acquisitions help build a fully integrated, rules-compliant stablecoin payments system – Poygon’s Open Money Stack.

Target: Coinme
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Seattle, Coinme is a U.S.-regulated digital asset payments company offering crypto-as-a-service and stablecoin and crypto payment infrastructure for enterprises, fintechs, wallets, and payment applications.

Coinme is licensed and operates in 48 U.S. states, as well as Puerto Rico, and has built systems designed to handle fiat-to-crypto and stablecoin payments at scale while meeting U.S. regulatory requirements.

Coinme provides capabilities that partners integrate into their products. These capabilities, delivered as a set of APIs or SDKs, include KYC, payments by debit card, bank transfer, or cash, converting between fiat and crypto, trading, and custody, so partners can offer end-to-end crypto and stablecoin features embedded in their own applications.

Coinme also supports a large cash-to-crypto network through partnerships, providing the software and compliance layer that enables cash on-ramps and off-ramps at 50,000+ locations across the U.S.

Coinme serves more than one million users and has processed more than $1.3 billion in total transactions since it launched. Its enterprise customers include Coinstar, Exodus, Mercuryo, Baanx, and Breeze.

Coinme was co-founded by CEO Neil Bergquist and has raised $41M in equity funding from Pantera, Digital Currency Group, Coinstar, Circle, and MoneyGram.

Coinme competitors include: ZeroHash, MoonPay, Bridge | Stripe, Banxa | OSL, and Paxos.

Buyer: Polygon Labs
Polygon was founded in 2017 as Matic Network and is actively undergoing an evolution in its product offering. Polygon Labs, formed in 2023, is responsible for supporting the development of the Polygon ecosystem, with a focus on fast, low-cost blockchain infrastructure for payments.

Polygon is now building the Open Money Stack, an integrated set of services designed to move money instantly and reliably, globally. It combines blockchain settlement on the Polygon network with core payment components like wallets, stablecoin integrations, cross-chain connectivity, and compliance tooling, to keep funds on-chain so they can be used across on-chain financial applications.

To make this work across many different blockchains, Polygon Labs is building AggLayer, a settlement layer meant to help different blockchains connect and exchange value with each other quickly and at low cost, reducing the need for separate, disconnected systems.

Polygon is a listed token with a current fully diluted value of $1.6B. Polygonscan shows more than 6.2 billion total transactions on Polygon. Polygon’s website also points to scale indicators like billions of dollars of stablecoins on the network, millions of transactions per day on average, and monthly payment volume, and describes Polygon as infrastructure that can support “trillions” of value moving through it.

The company was co-founded by Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, Mihailo Bjelic, and Anurag Arjun, and is currently led by CEO Marc Boiron, who was appointed in 2023.

Historically, in 2021, Polygon acquired zero-knowledge cryptography companies Mir and Hermez for $400M and $250M, respectively, but these are no longer aligned with the company’s Open Money Stack vision.

Transaction Parameters
Polygon Labs is acquiring Coinme for an undisclosed amount. In combination with another acquisition, Sequence, simultaneously announced by Polygon today. The combined acquisition value is around $250M. This marks one of the first examples of a protocol acquiring an operating business. The Coinme transaction is expected to close in Q2 2026.

Architect Partners served as the exclusive financial advisor to Coinme.

Notable comparable transactions include OSL | Banxa for $62M (M&A Alert), Nuvei | Simplex for $250M (M&A Alert), Ripple | Rail for $200M (M&A Alert), Stripe | Bridge for $1.1B (M&A Alert), MoonPay | Iron for $100M (M&A Alert), and MoonPay | Helio for $175M (M&A Alert).

Strategic Rationale
Polygon is acquiring Coinme and Sequence to move from being a settlement rail to owning the full experience of how money comes on-chain, moves on-chain, and settles back into the real world. The combination of Coinme’s licensed payments offering with Sequence’s wallet and payments orchestration stack gives Polygon an end‑to‑end, regulated crypto payments platform that spans physical kiosks, embedded wallets, and cross‑chain routing.

On Day 1, Polygon can take this integrated “crypto‑as‑a‑service” solution to banks, PSPs, neobanks, and fintechs who want compliant, turnkey stablecoin and token payments without building their own licensing, infrastructure, or user experience.

Architect Partners’ Observations
This acquisition(s) underscores a broader inflection point in the blockchain protocol market: technological performance and scalability alone will not win. The integration of real-world rails and the ability to deliver end-to-end value for mainstream users are becoming table stakes. As the market matures, competitive advantage is shifting toward owning the commercialization layer, including regulated fiat access, compliance operations, distribution channels, partner integrations, and strong product integration.

Networks that rely entirely on third-party providers risk commoditization, margin leakage, inconsistent user experience, and strategic dependency, just as stablecoins and tokenized products begin to drive meaningful transaction volume and the corresponding revenue opportunities.
Polygon’s actions show they fully understand the importance of this approach.

Sources
Polygon Press Release
Architect Partner M&A Tracker
PitchBook

Insights

2024 Year End Crypto M&A and Financing Report

Eric F. Risley
January 8, 2024
DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT

Download the full report above.

State of the Crypto Markets: We enter 2025 with optimism

 

The U.S. elections and the associated expected shift in the U.S. regulatory stance have changed everything. 

Crypto asset values, public equity prices, public financings and the less visible M&A and private financing markets have all demonstrated this change in sentiment. Even more importantly, corporate executives and venture capital and growth investors who started 2024 with caution now end the year with optimism. This optimism is reflecting itself in our frequent conversations and transaction-related engagement with ecosystem players, both crypto-native and traditional finance. Plenty of challenges remain but we also feel optimistic that 2025 may be looked upon in retrospect as a breakout year.

This Year-End Crypto M&A and Financing Report provides detailed data and observations. 

 

 

2024 CRYPTO YEAR IN REVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

 

Mergers & Acquisition Activity Up Strongly

M&A activity is back, reaching a record level of transaction announcements in Q4 2024, rounding out the year on a strong upswing. Overall 2024 increased by 29% in transaction count from last year and we are now within spitting distance of record 2022 levels. Regardless of increased activity levels, the vast majority of transactions are “tactical” and rather small. Anecdotal evidence suggests this will change in 2025 with the reemergence of strategic, high-value M&A.

 

Private Financing Activity Recovering As Well

Similarly, private financing activity was up 31% in 2024 with the strength coming from seed and early stage venture. Growth stage activity continues to be challenged actually decreasing by 6.3% this year, however, this too is likely to change. The catalyst will be strengthening financial performance by relatively mature crypto businesses, the necessary prerequisite to attracting growth capital.

 

Public Markets Demonstrated Exceptional Price Appreciation and Financing Activity

The Architect Partners Crypto Index rose 59% in 2024, significantly outperforming other equity indices and assets such as gold. Many in the index significantly outperformed the index overall. The public financing spigot, particular debt, was wide open with $18.5B raised in public markets, by several Bitcoin network operators, Coinbase, and the unique anomaly called Microstrategy.

 

 

2025 THEMES ARCHITECT PARTNERS IS TRACKING

 

Crypto Has Delivered Exceptional Value Creation

Crypto has attracted $130B of risk capital which today represents $3.8T in value, 29x returns, far better than traditional venture investing. This far outpaces the Internet at the same point in market development. More coming soon when we publish an update to our Family Ties report.

 

Initial Public Offerings are Coming

Numerous companies are on that track but 2026 may be stronger than 2025

 

Leverage Is Quickly Returning

Friend or foe this time? 

 

Mergers & Acquisitions – It’s Time for Urgency

Traditional financial services companies are entering the crypto space, a potentially existential competitive threat to some crypto-native players. Both will be spurred into action.

 

Moving Beyond Speculation – An Important Next Step

Stablecoins are proving to be a real-world use case, with both businesses and consumers participating. What other use cases have viability and can scale? The answer remains opaque.

 

 

Eric F Risley

Founder & Managing Partner

January 8, 2025