Led by Coinbase, mergers and acquisitions in the blockchain space are heating up.
LEXIT, which is creating the world’s first mergers and acquisitions platform based on blockchain technology, decided to take a look at some of the most notable M&As that have taken place in the revolutionary blockchain industry.
Keystone Capital Corp./Venovate Marketplace/Digital Wealth LLC
Most recently, in June 2018, Coinbase acquired the financial services firms Keystone Capital Corp, Venovate Marketplace, Inc. and Digital Wealth LLC, so that it could become a SEC-regulated broker dealer. Coinbase wrote on its blog:
“Ultimately, we can envision a world where we may even work with regulators to tokenize existing types of securities, bringing to this space the benefits of cryptocurrency-based markets — like 24/7 trading, real-time settlement, and chain-of-title.”
MediaChain Labs
Spotify acquired the Brooklyn-based blockchain startup Mediachain Labs, which works on developing blockchain technology for connecting artists and other rights holders with the tracks on Spotify’s services. Before the acquisition, Mediachain Labs had created an attribution engine for creators and a cryptocurrency that rewards creators for their work.
Satoshi Dice
Satoshi Dice was announced in April 2012 by its then operator Erik Voorhees (Shapeshift founder/CEO). In 2013, he then sold it to an anonymous buyer for $11,500,000.
Gyft
Vinny Lingham founded Gyft in January 2012 and it quickly became one of the better examples of how bitcoin and digital currency could be used with its gift cards for bitcoin model. Rumors placed the deal at larger than $54 million.
Earn.com
In April 2018 Coinbase bought Earn.com for more than $120 million, and then made founder Balaji Srinivasan its first CTO. The abovementioned deal did not take place long after 21.co had rebranded to Earn.com to emphasize its commercial social network, moving away from the manufacture of devices tailored made for the blockchain economy.
Turner Valley Oil and Gas, Inc.
As it changed its name to PrimeStar Bitumen, Turner announced a business plan to include acquisitions in blockchain technology with a focus on shipping, supply chain, and infrastructure.
Blue Ocean Financial Technology
Overstock’s t0 purchased Blue Ocean Financial Technology in January 2017. Blue Ocean assets would allow t0 to deliver real time market information.
"Blue Ocean Technologies will provide investors in the rapidly growing Asian region with an avenue to execute U.S. equities during their usual business hours,” said TØ president Joe Cammarata. “This concept is the first of its kind, and has already attracted the attention of several large market-making clients to provide daily liquidity within our platform."
Green Address
Blockstream purchased bitcoin wallet software provider GreenAddress in July 2016. The deal entailed the addition of a multi-platform wallet and strong development team to strengthen the company’s sidechain platform.
“Today's announcement is not a signal of our intention to begin acquiring companies in the Bitcoin or blockchain technology space,” stated Blockstream. “As we looked at our sidechain technology roadmap, including an open source, well-tested, and production-ready wallet was a natural choice. It was necessary to give depth to the platform and to meet requirements of many of our enterprise applications.”
Blocktrail
Bitmain acquired Blocktrail in July 2016.
“In addition to the popular bitcoin wallet, Blocktrail is well known in the bitcoin space for its developer API and its block explorer,” wrote Bitmain. “As part of the acquisition, Blocktrail’s products, services and team will gradually be merged into BTC.com.”
Blockstack.io
In October 2015, Digital Asset acquired Blockstack.io.
At the time, Blockstack’s technology was available in beta, including a hosted platform for financial institutions to develop blockchain-based applications using application programming interfaces (APIs) and software development kits (SDKs).
“The firm’s underlying platform leverages both open-source and proprietary technologies to create a private blockchain that is used by a group of known participants,” wrote Digital Asset. “Blockstack’s customizable solutions include multi-signature security and the ability to plug in external components.”
ChangeTip
In spring of 2016 ChangeTip’s core development team was acqui-hired by Airbnb. In the months following the acquihire, ChangeTip attempted to sell the remaining assets and code tied to its tipping service but struggled to do so. It ultimately shuttered.
Skry
In February 2017, Bloq acquired Skry, a pioneer in blockchain analytics. The transaction was Bloq's first acquisition and includes all of Skry's intellectual property and team.
Cipher Browser
Cipher Browser, a decentralized app browser and wallet for the Ethereum blockchain, was purchased in April 2018 by Coinbase.