Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

A rare signal is emerging in the crypto primary market: merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions are approaching half of financing transactions.

According to RootData data statistics, this month, there have been 10 M&A cases in the crypto industry, while the number of financing rounds has only reached 14. In terms of the total number of transactions in the primary market, M&A has accounted for about 42%, the highest level in history.

The implication of this data is not complicated: in the past, the main focus of the crypto primary market was financing; now, more and more transactions are turning into acquisitions.

This does not mean that the industry has suddenly entered a flourishing cycle. On the contrary, the rapid rise in the share of M&A first reflects the ongoing downturn in the financing market. Since November 2024, the monthly number of M&A transactions in the crypto industry has remained at about 10-20, while the number of financing transactions has considerably declined from around 100 to about 50, and this month may even set a new low.

In other words, M&A transactions have not truly replaced the excitement of the financing market, but have become the most stable form of transaction in the primary market after the financing market contracted.

For project parties, this means that the pathway of relying on narratives for financing, token expectations, and ecological subsidies to maintain valuation is narrowing. For leading companies, this means a rare window: to buy teams, licenses, technologies, liquidity, and market access at lower prices, with less competition and stronger bargaining power.

After the downturn in financing, the crypto primary market has not stopped operating, but the pricing power is shifting from VC hands to those of buyer giants.

1. Why is the number of M&As continuing to rise?

In the past year, buyers that have made multiple moves include Coinbase, Kraken, Ripple, MoonPay, Polymarket, Kaiko, Sol Strategies, GSR, Keyrock, Jupiter, Paxos, Ondo Finance, and others.

These companies operate in different sectors, including exchanges, payment companies, market makers, data service providers, prediction markets, RWA platforms, Solana treasury companies, as well as stablecoin and financial infrastructure companies. However, their M&A logic is highly consistent: to fill in key capabilities at a lower cost during the industry's trough.

First, valuations are low enough.

When the financing environment tightens, many projects can no longer raise funds at previous valuations. For buyers, this means better acquisition prices, fewer bidding opponents, and stronger leverage. For sellers, even if the price is not ideal, being acquired by leading companies may still be more certain than continuing to dilute, lay off employees, or pivot.

Taking Messari, which was recently acquired, as an example, this project had previously reached a peak valuation of $300 million, raising over $70 million, but due to its core investment research business being severely impacted by AI and competition, repeatedly laying off employees and shrinking its business, the final acquisition price by Blockworks was only just over $10 million.

Second, saving time and trial-and-error costs.

The windows of opportunity in the crypto industry are often very short. Once a regulatory gap opens, a new product model works, or an asset class heats up, the market will not give companies two or three years to build teams from scratch. Acquiring an established team is often faster than in-house incubation and avoids unnecessary trial-and-error costs.

Coinbase's acquisition of Deribit for $2.9 billion is a typical case. Deribit is one of the major crypto options platforms, with a trading volume reaching about $1.2 trillion in 2024. Through this transaction, Coinbase directly entered the core global crypto derivatives market instead of building an options trading platform from scratch.

Third, acquiring licenses and compliance resources.

As market regulatory frameworks in the United States, European Union, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other regions become clearer, licenses are becoming core assets for crypto companies. Every aspect, including trading, custody, payment, stablecoins, brokerage, clearing, and derivatives, requires compliance access.

The logic behind Kraken's acquisition of NinjaTrader is just that. NinjaTrader is a futures trading platform aimed at retail users with a trading volume of $1.5 billion; this deal helped Kraken expand into multi-asset trading and regulated derivatives business.

Fourth, integrating upstream and downstream of the industry chain.

Crypto giants are moving from single-point products to financial conglomeration. Exchanges do not only facilitate trading but also engage in derivatives, wallets, custody, payments, RWA, token issuance, data, and institutional services; stablecoin companies do not just issue coins but also operate payment networks, AI agents, and financial infrastructure; RWA platforms not only issue assets but also need to master compliance, distribution, liquidity, and data access.

The acquisition path of crypto payment giant MoonPay is very typical. In 2025, MoonPay acquired crypto payment startup Helio for about $175 million; it then announced the acquisition of the stablecoin infrastructure platform Iron to expand its enterprise payment and stablecoin capabilities.

2. What are the focus areas for M&A?

From the recent M&A directions, the fields where crypto giants are most willing to spend money are mainly concentrated in four categories: trading infrastructure, payment and stablecoins, compliance licenses, and asset issuance and distribution.

Trading infrastructure remains the largest battlefield.

Coinbase's acquisition of Deribit and Kraken's acquisition of NinjaTrader share the same underlying judgment: the growth of spot trading is limited; derivatives, options, futures, multi-asset trading, and institutional services represent higher value profit pools. Especially as ETFs, RWAs, tokenized stocks, and prediction markets gradually rise, the boundaries of trading platforms are expanding from "crypto-to-crypto exchanges" to "global asset trading gateways."

Payments and stablecoins are the second main line.

Companies like MoonPay, Ripple, Paxos, and Tether are expanding around payment, stablecoin clearing, merchant acquiring, enterprise payment, and cross-border transfers. Ripple's recent acquisition activities have been particularly aggressive, including its acquisition of custody company Metaco for $250 million in 2023, followed by expansions around stablecoin payments, prime brokerage, and corporate funds management.

This indicates that the stablecoin war is no longer just a competition of issuance scale, but a battle for payment networks, compliance channels, institutional clients, and scenario entrances.

RWA and asset issuance are also becoming new hotspots for M&A.

Companies like Ondo Finance, Jupiter, Polymarket, and Coinbase are expanding their asset issuance, liquidity distribution, and trading entry by means of acquisitions or integrations. Coinbase's acquisitions of Liquifi and Echo are around token issuance and on-chain financing capabilities. Echo, with a transaction volume of $375 million, helps Coinbase expand towards on-chain capital formation platforms; Liquifi provides token distribution and management tools, aligning with Coinbase's bet on compliant token issuance pathways.

The strategic significance of such acquisitions lies in the fact that whoever controls asset issuance can control the source of transactions. In the past, exchanges mainly earned trading fees from existing assets; in the future, leading platforms hope to profit from the entire chain of asset birth, financing, listing, distribution, market making, custody, and trading. Acquisitions are the fastest way to connect this chain.

3. M&A is rewriting the exit logic of the primary market.

The warming up of M&A is not necessarily a bad thing for entrepreneurs.

In the past, the exit paths of crypto projects relied too heavily on tokens. Whether a project can succeed often depended on whether it can issue tokens, get listed, maintain market value, and create liquidity. However, this mechanism has created numerous problems in recent years: project teams withdrawing early, VC unlocking selling pressure, retail investors taking over, high valuations with low liquidity, real businesses being tied up by token prices.

M&A provides another pathway. A team does not have to independently grow into a giant; as long as it can form real capabilities in certain areas, such as licensing, technology, liquidity, compliance, users, data, risk control, market-making, or payment networks, it can still be acquired by larger platforms.

This will change the behaviors of entrepreneurs. Many projects in the past issued tokens for the sake of issuing tokens, packaged narratives for financing; in the future, more teams may start to value product, revenue, customers, and strategic value that can be integrated.

This is also why the activity of M&A, to some extent, will give a shot in the arm to the primary market. It indicates that there are still asset buyers in the cryptocurrency industry, there is still value reassessment, and there is still the possibility for exit.

It is just that the market is filtering value in a more stringent way. What can be acquired is no longer the grand narrative on PPT but real capabilities that can be directly integrated into business frameworks.

4. The crypto industry is becoming more centralized.

The rise of M&A is underpinned by a sluggish financing market, declining project valuations, and increasing pressure for entrepreneurial teams to exit. But it also indicates that the crypto industry has not lost its capital vitality; rather, it is reshaping resources in another way.

Another crucial issue that must be addressed is that the crypto industry is becoming more centralized.

As asset issuance, trading, market making, custody, payment, and data become increasingly centralized among a few companies, the openness and anti-monopoly principles initially emphasized by the crypto industry may be reshaped by real business logic.

Especially as compliance becomes a core barrier, the difficulty for new entrepreneurs to enter the market will further increase. The future crypto industry may reflect a structure similar to traditional finance: a few large platforms control licenses, customers, and liquidity, while smaller teams can only act as technology suppliers, ecological plugins, or potential acquisition targets.

Therefore, another implication of the rising share of M&A is that the crypto industry is bidding farewell to the era of low-barrier entrepreneurship.

Future entrepreneurs will not only have to face market competition but also the ecological boundaries and regulatory barriers imposed by the giants.

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