To date, we have released three installments outlining the crypto payments opportunity: Part I: Why Crypto Payments?, Part II: Momentum is Building, Part III: Crypto Payments Market Map.
This week, we turn to recent M&A and private financing activity in crypto payments. Architect Partners has tracked every private financing and acquisition in crypto for years, publishing quarterly and annual reviews. We read this activity the way we built our market map: through the interdependent functions of the crypto payments stack.
Most striking, and important, about this wave is that stablecoins are the engine. Every major deal traces back to stablecoin settlement: Bridge at $1.1B, BVNK for up to $1.8B, Reap at $600M, and GTreasury at $1B. Regulatory clarity unlocked the activity, first Europe’s MiCA framework in 2024, then the US GENIUS Act in 2025. Without stablecoins, this market doesn’t exist in its current form. Value is concentrated in those same four deals, with buyers paying for demonstrated transaction flow. Traditional payments companies are now here and are writing the largest checks. Stripe and Mastercard account for two of the three largest disclosed transactions, and neither was an active acquirer in this space before 2024.
The following starts with the financing backdrop: the investors leading rounds, Coinbase Ventures most active among them, and the steady climb in capital raised since the crypto winter thawed. We then turn to M&A, the largest transactions and the logic behind them, and the most active acquirers from MoonPay to Ripple. We give particular attention to Polygon Labs, whose purchases of Coinme and Sequence show crypto networks repositioning from protocols into financial platforms. As we’ve often stated, crypto does not stand alone. Traditional payments companies are very much alive, and increasingly they are the buyers. We close on how crypto-native and traditional acquirers now compete for the same assets, with announced M&A value up 3x over the past four quarters versus the prior eight, and incumbents like Visa and JPMorgan still largely absent.