Investing and trading continues to be the dominant sub-sector driving M&A volume over the last quarter. In Q1 2023, the sub-sector accounted for 16 of the 50 deals or 32%.
Investing and trading continues to be the dominant sub-sector driving M&A volume over the last quarter. In Q1 2023, the sub-sector accounted for 16 of the 50 deals or 32%.
The key driver of this is fairly simple, for companies to grow and expand they need to offer new and exciting product sets and features to encourage increased trading amongst their user base. The vast majority of these deals are large crypto acquirers, like Coinbase, Galaxy Digital, etc. acquiring new capabilities such as custody, expanding coin offerings, institutional trading support, staking, etc. Some examples include Coinbase acquiring One River Digital Asset Management which will enable them to offer an asset management service to institutions, Galaxy Digital acquiring GK8 for their custody solution, and many other smaller deals.
This week Pocket Bitcoin acquired Bitkipi which enables Pocket Bitcoin to offer a self-custody solution to their users. These deals are only likely to continue as competition in the crypto exchange space continues to heat up. Companies need to offer a broad feature set to keep users on their platform.