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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

CoinDesk Acquires CCData & CryptoCompare for an Undisclosed Amount

Ryan McCulloch
October 17, 2024
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Transaction Overview

On October 16th, 2024, CoinDesk, a crypto-focused media company, announced its acquisition of CCData, an institutional crypto data provider, and their retail data aggregator, CryptoCompare, for an undisclosed valuation.

 

 

Target: CCData & CryptoCompare

Founded in 2014, CCData was one of the first companies to identify quality exchange volume data that differentiated between what was real and fake, thus becoming the industry standard. Their data offering covers over 7,000 digital assets, 300 exchanges, and 40 billion data calls per month. They also offer a liquid digital indices product that tracks $4B in AUM across 250 investable indices through VanEck, SGX, and Nomura. Lastly, they offer institutional research and an API call that taps into 300+ exchanges and 300,000 digital asset pairs to help inform institutional traders.

 

The company’s client base spans over 500 regulators, asset managers, and banks such as JP Morgan, Refinitiv, Coinbase, MSCI, SIX, 21Shares, ETC Group, and SGX among others.

 

According to FCA filings, CCData had revenues of $4.0M, $3.3M, and $2.5M in 2023, 2022, and 2021 respectively. In 2023 the firm had $261K in profits.

 

Founded in 2014 and based in London, CCData has around 70 employees. The company had raised $9.3M over three funding rounds and two angel investments. In January 2024, the company raised $2.5M from MV Index Solutions, putting the company’s post-money valuation at $41M. Other investors included VanEck and Cadenza Capital.

 

CryptoCompare, founded as the retail arm of CCData, serves around 300,000 users, offering real-time and historical data on digital assets, including prices and trading volumes, along with tools like crypto indices, portfolio tracking, and analytics. The platform supports individual and institutional clients, aiming to provide accurate and reliable data for trading, investment, and research needs.

 

CCData main competitors include Amberdata, Lukka, CoinGecko, CoinMetrics, Messari, Kaiko, and CoinMarketCap.

 

 

Buyer: CoinDesk

CoinDesk is a crypto-focused media platform that has three core businesses. 1) A content producer that publishes articles and research on the crypto industry, 2) An indices business that benchmarks tracks $8B in trading volume, and 3) An event organizer that puts on the Consensus conferences.

 

Based in NYC and founded in 2013 by Shakil Khan, CoinDesk now has over 150 employees. The company was first acquired by Digital Currency Group in 2016, and was recently acquired by crypto exchange Bullish, in November 2023 for $75M in an all-cash transaction.

 

CoinDesk, in January 2021, had previously acquired TradeBlock, a market analytics, order management, execution, and compliance automation tool, where it kept the index data (now CoinDesk Indices) and spun out and eventually closed the remainder of the business.

 

CoinDesk reportedly had $50M in revenue in 2022 and before its acquisition by Bullish brought in $24M in Q1-Q3 2023, or an annualized $32M.

 

Similar trends were seen in their web traffic, according to Semrush, CoinDesk had 3.5M monthly visitors in the last month, while it had 13.2M and 4.1M in December 2022 and September 2023, respectively.

 

 

Transaction Parameters

CoinDesk closed on the acquisition of CCData and CryptoCompare for an undisclosed amount.

 

Previous comparable transactions include: Binance | CoinMarketCap (M&A Alert), Lukka | Coinfirm, Amberdata | Genesis Volatility, Blockdaemon | Anyblock Analytics, Morningstar Ventures | CoinFYI

 

 

Strategic Rationale

This acquisition creates CoinDesk’s digital asset data business, which enhances their index business and allows for increased depth of data for their media business.

 

Additionally, CoinDesk will acquire CryptoCompare’s 300,000 active retail users, driving new subscriptions and cross-selling opportunities.

 

 

Architect Partners’ Observations

In an industry that is defined by every transaction being trackable, data matters. CoinDesk operates a media and indices business that both rely heavily on market data of third parties and made the clear decision that owning and controlling access to that dataset is a requirement.

 

As the data and data analytics sub-sector within crypto matures, we  expect similar transactions to play out as groups come to similar conclusions as CoinDesk. Historically, data and data analytics created multibillion dollar companies in traditional finance with groups like Refinitiv, S&P Global, FICO, etc. As the crypto industry matures, the data tracking transactions and flows will become increasingly more important to drive investment decisions.

 

 

Sources 

PitchBook, CCData Press Release, CoinDesk Press Release, CCData Website