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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

Coinbase Acquiring Deribit for $2.9B

John Kennick
May 10th, 2025
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Transaction Overview

On May 8th, 2025, Coinbase, a crypto exchange, announced it would acquire Deribit, a crypto derivatives exchange, in a deal valued at $2.9 billion. This is the largest M&A transaction that the cryptocurrency industry has had to date; exceeding recent notable transactions such as NinjaTrader | Kraken, Hidden Road | Ripple, and Bridge | Stripe. 

 

Target: Deribit

Deribit, founded in 2016 and headquartered in Dubai, UAE, is the global leader in cryptocurrency derivatives trading, providing institutional-grade infrastructure, technology, and risk management that rivals top traditional-finance exchanges. The platform serves a broad mix of institutional and professional retail clients through a highly liquid marketplace spanning Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital assets. Its core offerings include: 1) Options trading with industry-leading liquidity for BTC and ETH contracts, 2) Futures trading that combines high leverage with real-time margining and liquidation engines, 3) Perpetual and spot trading for non-expiring leveraged exposure as well as straightforward asset ownership, 4) Advanced risk-management tools such as real-time portfolio analytics, and 5) Institutional access features including segregated sub-accounts and low-latency API connectivity for algorithmic trading.

 

The company had raised $40M in capital from one raise, valuing them at $400M in September 2022. Notable active investors included 10T Holdings, QCP Capital, Akuna Capital, and XBTO.

 

Buyer: Coinbase

Coinbase, founded in 2012 and headquartered in New York, NY, is the largest publicly listed U.S. crypto exchange. It also provides custody services for retail users and institutions, as well as institutional prime brokerage and data analytics services.

 

Most relevant to this transaction, Coinbase operates a U.S. futures business through Coinbase Financial Markets and Coinbase Derivatives Exchange, and an international spot-and-perpetuals business through Coinbase’s International Exchange product.

 

The U.S. product line resulted from the acquisition of FairX, a CFTC-regulated Designated Contract Market, which instantly provided Coinbase with futures capabilities. Meanwhile, the international product line was established in 2023 in Bermuda to capture international crypto volumes with a ring-fenced venue outside U.S. jurisdiction.

 

Coinbase is currently valued at a $47B enterprise value, with $7B in trailing twelve months revenue ended March 2025 (6.7x EV / revenue multiple) and $3.2B in trailing twelve months EBITDA (14.7 EV / EBITDA multiple). 

 

Transaction Parameters

Coinbase announced the acquisition for $2.9B, with $700M in cash consideration and the rest being composed of 11M shares of Coinbase Class A Common Stock. Architect partners estimated this transaction occurred at a 9.7x valuation / revenue multiple, based upon ~$1.2T in 2024 transaction volume and an average fee of 0.025%.

 

Notable similar transactions include Hidden Road | Ripple (M&A Alert), NinjaTrader | Kraken for $1.5B (M&A Alert), and FairX | Coinbase (M&A Alert).

 

Strategic Rationale

This transaction enables Coinbase to complete its derivatives platform, giving traders access to spot, futures, perpetual-futures, and options markets. In addition, the acquisition expands Coinbase’s international footprint and makes it the immediate global leader in crypto derivatives by open interest and options volume. Finally, because Deribit generates positive EBITDA, it offers more stable, less cyclical revenue and immediately improves Coinbase’s financial profile.

 

Architect Partners’ Observations

This acquisition follows our thesis that derivatives M&A will continue to be active. This deal is a key marker along with several recent deals – FalconX acquired Arbelos Markets and Kraken acquired Ninja Trader  (albeit Ninja Trader focused more on TradFi derivatives). But the difference in this deal is scale – Coinbase acquired one of the largest in a headline deal.

 

This is a logical progression in the market, and we expect more of these to come due to several factors. More demand and more supply foster more deals.

  • Higher margins: Derivatives are a higher margin product than spot trading, so firms will look to expand their offering as trading fees are compressed. 
  • Supply: There have been several newly launched crypto derivatives firms like Arbelos, D2X and One Trading so there are more choices to acquire up & down the scale size
  • Institutional demand: Regulatory changes (e.g., ETF approvals) and (optimistically) upcoming crypto-friendly frameworks have spurred Institutional trading. So, increasing demand means the larger firms are now able to move more aggressively to acquire and be confident that they will not get in the crosshairs of the regulators. Coinbase will look to capture more institutions as clients with this as a wedge
  • Precedents: Coinbase bought FairX in 2022 (now Coinbase Derivatives) and CBOE acquired ErisX in 2021 (which they wrote down). But timing was a bit early on those deals due to the above-not-yet-seen regulatory clarity. We are now hearing firms say that timing is looking better.
  • Competitive pressures: Since Coinbase is taking captive one of the largest derivatives firms, their competitors will look to enhance products via acquisitions

 

So overall, it’s a deal that makes sense in the market. It is at a premium valuation in our estimation (considering nearly ⅔ is paid via equity), but not an unreasonable valuation. We expect more to come around derivatives trading and infrastructure.

 

Sources

PitchBook, Coinbase Press Release