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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

Ecosystem Thoughts

Q1 2025 Crypto M&A and Financing Report

Eric F. Risley
April 3, 2024
DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT

Download the full report above.

State of the Crypto Markets: Crypto Solid but Macro Headwinds?

 

Three months ago our Q4 2024 report started with: “The U.S. elections and the associated expected shift in the U.S. regulatory stance have changed everything.” 

 

That remains true, however, we have a newly introduced macro theme: economic and foreign policy uncertainty driven by tariffs and the potential reshuffling of global alliances. We write this hours after the U.S. administration revealed its tariff plans. Only time will tell the impact of these dynamics as well as the ability to advance constructive crypto legislation in the U.S. 

 

We remain cautiously optimistic as both crypto M&A and private financing have trended upward in Q1 2025.

 

Our 2024 Year-End Crypto M&A and Financing Report is linked here for your reference.

 

 

Q1 2025 CRYPTO HIGHLIGHTS

 

Mergers & Acquisition Activity Up Strongly

M&A activity in Q1 2025 is even stronger than Q4 2024, again reaching a record level of transactions and hitting an all-time high in announced consideration paid. Strategic, high-value M&A is beginning to reemerge, with Kraken’s $1.5B acquisition of NinjaTraders being the marquee deal and we also count six transactions above $100M. 

 

Private Financing Activity Also Building 

Private financing activity and investment capital also rose in Q1 2025. Seed and early stage continue to dominate deal flow, however, most of the consideration this quarter was tied up in growth stage financings. This is a positive sign for the industry, as the fundamental prerequisites for growth stage equity are strong financial performance and relative maturity. This exists so we anticipate further growth in this segment of the financing market.

 

Public Markets Demonstrate Crypto Volatility

The Architect Partners Crypto Index rose 50% in 2024 and gave up roughly half of that in Q1 2025. For context, Bitcoin declined 10% in Q1 while our index of public companies fell 23%. Trading volume, the lifeblood of many in our index, declined 25%. Circle’s IPO S-1 became public as we write this and large capital raises, mostly via convertible debt instruments, for both Bitcoin mining expansion and speculative purchase of Bitcoin for treasury holdings continued unabated from last year’s pace.

 

 

STRATEGIC THEMES ARCHITECT PARTNERS IS TRACKING

 

To keep us honest let’s see how Q1 demonstrated our themes presented in our year end report.

 

Crypto Has Delivered Exceptional Value Creation

  • Q4 Statement: Crypto has attracted $130B of risk capital which today represents $3.4T in value and 25x returns, much better than traditional venture investing. This far outpaces the Internet at the same point in market development. 
  • Q1 Progress: Our 2025 update to Family Ties was published on February 13th. Q1 2025 ended with $2.8T in value (vs. $3.4T) but the fundamental point remains: crypto investment returns have been exceptional.

 

Initial Public Offerings are Coming

  • Q4 Statement: Numerous companies are on that track but 2026 may be stronger than 2025.
  • Q1 Progress: Circle just released their S-1 and Amber Group debuted on the NASDAQ.

 

Leverage Is Quickly Returning

  • Q4 Statement: Is leverage friend or foe this time? 
  • Q1 Progress: Friend so far, with risk management high priority. Data is difficult to compile but we see significant growth in both collateralized and uncollateralized lending.

 

Mergers & Acquisitions – It’s Time for Urgency

  • Q4 Statement: Traditional financial services companies are entering crypto, a potentially existential competitive threat to some crypto-native players. Both will be spurred into action.
  • Q1 Progress: Legislation is important for action but traditional financial services players are already re-engaging in preparation.

 

Moving Beyond Speculation – An Important Next Step

  • Q4 Statement: Stablecoins are proving to be a real-world use case, with businesses and consumers partaking. Other use cases with both viability and scalability remain unclear.
  • Q1 Progress: The payments use case is also taking root. More from Architect Partners soon.

 

Eric F Risley

Founder & Managing Partner

April 3, 2025