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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

Alerts

BitGo Raises $100 Million

Michael S. Klena
August 17, 2023
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The company has now raised a total of $169.5M over seven funding rounds, with their Series B funding of ~$43M, led by Valor Equity Partners, taking place in December 2017.

Transaction Overview

On August 16, 2023, BitGo raised $100 million in Series C funding from new strategic investors at a $1.75B valuation. 

 

Company Description

BitGo is an NYDFS-regulated qualified custodian (QC) providing custody, financial services, and core infrastructure to over 1,500 institutional clients globally. The company is the leading crypto custodian, processing 20% of all Bitcoin transactions by value, and has top-tier clients such as Nike, Bitstamp, Pantera, eToro, and Mysten Labs. Since the beginning of 2023, new clients have grown by over 60%.

 

BitGo has three core offerings: 1) custody, 2) prime brokerage services, and 3) BitGo settlement network (Go Network). BitGo’s core custody offering includes hot, cold, and self-custodial wallets along with a “wallet-as-a-service” offering for web3 applications that creates and manages wallets for end-users. Launched in May 2020, BitGo Prime offers trading, lending, liquidity, and staking services to institutional clients. Since launch, staking services have increased by 40x. Earlier in 2023, the BitGo Settlement Network or Go Network was launched, seeking to replace the void left by the shutdown of SEN and Signet. Through BitGo Trust accounts, institutional clients can instantly transfer and settle digital and fiat assets. BitGo has created a closed-loop system that keeps clients’ assets in a secure, qualified custodian (BitGo) and enables them to have full BitGo Prime interoperability (trading, lending, staking, etc). Currently, OTC desks, exchanges, hedge funds, broker-dealers, lenders, payment processors, and security token issuers are actively utilizing the platform. 

 

BitGo was founded in 2013 by Mike Belshe and Ben Davenport and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The firm has ~100 employees and is led by CEO Mike Belshe.

 

Funding

The company has now raised a total of $169.5M over seven funding rounds, with their Series B funding of ~$43M, led by Valor Equity Partners, taking place in December 2017. The current Series C round puts their valuation at $1.75B. Previous investors include Goldman Sachs, Galaxy Digital, and DRW.

 

BitGo plans to use the funding for strategic acquisitions in the fintech infrastructure and services space and global expansion. The company had plans to acquire Prime Trust in June, however, that acquisition was terminated due to Prime Trust’s bankruptcy. 

 

Competition

BitGo competes with other crypto custody and infrastructure firms, as well as groups involved in payments. Some examples include Fireblocks, Copper, Anchorage Digital, Komainu, Coinbase Custody, Hex Trust, and BCB Group. 

 

Architect Partners’ Perspective

The main theme driving this capital raise is simple: trust wins.

 

BitGo continues to be a trusted custodian for the institutional digital asset ecosystem and has been since its inception in 2013. Since its founding, there have never been any security breaches or incidents that would lead to mistrust. While many others struggle with hacks and security, BitGo has thrived, with increased client onboarding by 60% since January 2023 driving a 20% AUC increase. 

 

Another consideration impacting the crypto trading sector is the US regulators considering separating the various functions of crypto execution (execution, custody, lending, etc) to help reduce counterparty risk for crypto customers. Nasdaq’s decision to not pursue crypto custody is a clear sign that this regulatory concern is real and roles within the trade lifecycle of crypto are becoming more clear. 

 

Today the market dynamics of late-stage crypto financings continue to be challenging. By this time last year, there had been 56 capital raises greater than $100M totaling $12.9B in capital raised. This year to date there have been only 8 deals greater than $100M totaling $1.2B in capital raised. The reason for the large downturn is that despite the negative crypto market pressures, venture capitalists are still requiring significant growth to invest. With the vast majority of late-stage crypto companies seeing declining revenues, only a select few can raise capital. 

 

Sources 

PitchBook, Company Website, Press Release