Markets
Crypto’s $4.1 Billion Deal Is About to Get “Much More Substantial,” Says Crypto Fund Founder – DL News
- Acquisitions on the stock market are the easiest transactions to carry out.
- Transaction activity will not be limited to the United States.
The crypto industry has never really seen a phase of frenzied trading, with large companies historically preferring to scoop up tokens already on the market.
That’s changing, says Dan Tapiero, CEO and chief investment officer of 10T Holdings, a $1.4 billion fund that invests in digital asset companies.
Industry $4.1 billion in transactions to date – capped most recently by Robinhood Markets’ $200 million acquisition of Bitstamp – is just the beginning.
“We will see a lot more, and probably a lot more substantial; $200 million is a very low value,” Tapiero said. DL News.
Tapiero said swaps are the easiest transactions for traditional businesses.
“Traditional financial exchanges should buy or merge with some of the largest global exchanges,” he said. “There are at least 10-15 exchanges of decent quality.”
Tapiero said the industry is seeing renewed interest this year – as evidenced by the spectacular acquisition of Robinhod – thanks to the January approval of Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds, which are among the heavyweight issuers of Wall Street BlackRock and Fidelity Investments.
“It really woke people up,” he said. “Until six months ago, people thought this space was just going to disappear, and then we had the ETF.”
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Indeed, the last six months have already been punctuated by small acquisitions in the industry.
In February, Tools for Humanity, the company developing the controversial iris scanning crypto project Worldcoin, acquired a wallet provider and a team of engineers for an undisclosed amount.
In March, Marathon Digital, one of the largest Bitcoin mining companies in the industry, said acquired another Bitcoin mine in Texas, adding 200 megawatts of mining power.
“I’ve never been able to buy things at such low levels.”
— Dan Tapiero, CEO and CIO of 10T Holdings
Joe Lubin, CEO of Consensys said DL News in May, his blockchain company was working on an acquisition in the crypto security sector.
In June, Polygon bought another technology without knowledge company called Toposware.
Tapiero said Consensys – which counts stablecoin issuer Circle and crypto exchange Kraken among its portfolio companies which are look public listings – I just closed a new fund and am also going to invest now.
“I’ve never been able to buy things at such low levels,” he said.
“We never had those kinds of deals, because the playing field was tighter.”
Crypto’s Three-Year Upheaval
The rise in deal talk comes at a time when Bitcoin is hitting record highs, but traditional investors are still hesitant to jump into the crypto sector due to its notorious volatility and sky-high valuations.
The last three years have been no exception.
In 2021, Celsius Network reached a valuation of $3 billion and included Caisse de Dépôt, the second largest pension fund in Canada, as an investor. A year later, the crypto lender filed for bankruptcy.
Crypto exchange FTX, valued at 32 billion dollars in January 2022, collapsed seven months later with an $8 billion hole in its balance sheet.
In March, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud.
Liam Kelly is based in Berlin DL News’ corresponding. Contact him at liam@dlnews.com.