Original Title: "133 Transactions, 8.6 Billion Dollars, Who Bought the Crypto Industry in 2025"
Original Author: Lin Wanwan, Dongcha Beating
The crypto market in 2025 is very fragmented.
BTC has retraced over 30% this year, altcoins are bleeding, and cries of "crypto is dead" are echoing everywhere. The new investors who jumped in at the beginning of the year have seen their accounts shrink by more than half; some have already uninstalled trading platform apps, while others are still holding on, waiting for a recovery. The sentiment in the crypto community has dropped to its lowest point since the FTX collapse in 2022.
But amidst this chaos, another group of people is frantically buying.
According to PitchBook data, the total amount of mergers and acquisitions in the crypto industry reached 8.6 billion dollars in 2025, with 267 transactions, a year-on-year increase of 18%. This figure is nearly four times that of 2024 and exceeds the total of the past four years. If we use a broader statistical scope from Architect Partners, the total is 12.9 billion dollars.
The scale of the major transactions is astonishing: Coinbase spent 2.9 billion to acquire the options giant Deribit, setting a record for the largest acquisition in crypto history; Kraken shelled out 1.5 billion to acquire the traditional futures platform NinjaTrader, dubbed "the largest integration of TradFi and Crypto in history"; Ripple acquired Wall Street's main broker Hidden Road for 1.25 billion, officially entering the heart of institutional finance.
Retail investors are fearfully cutting losses and exiting, while institutions are aggressively building positions on the ruins.
Interestingly, these institutions are not buying coins. If they were optimistic about coin prices, they could just buy BTC directly; why spend billions acquiring companies?
What they are buying are trading platforms, licenses, custodians, payment channels, and clearing systems.
They are bottom-fishing the entire industry's infrastructure.
This reminds one of Wall Street after the 2008 financial crisis. Lehman collapsed, Bear Stearns disappeared, but JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs survived and took the opportunity to acquire a slew of assets. After the crisis, the strong became stronger, and industry concentration significantly increased.
The crypto industry in 2025 is playing out a similar script.
Why Traditional Finance is "Bottom-Fishing"
Why 2025? Because three keys turned simultaneously.
The first key is the SEC's changeover.
During Gary Gensler's era, the crypto industry lived in a state of "Schrödinger's compliance": you didn't know if the coins you issued were securities, you didn't know when the trading platform's business would be deemed illegal, and you didn't know if your company would still exist when you woke up tomorrow. Almost every notable company, including Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, Ripple, Uniswap, and OpenSea, has received subpoenas or Wells Notices from the SEC.
This uncertainty is the nemesis of mergers and acquisitions. No serious financial institution is willing to spend a billion dollars to buy a company that could be "targeted for elimination" by regulators at any moment. How do you conduct due diligence? How do you build a valuation model? How do you price legal risks? All are question marks.
In January 2025, the Trump administration took office, and the SEC's attitude turned 180 degrees. On his first day in office, new acting chairman Mark Uyeda established a Crypto Task Force, announcing a shift from "enforcement" to "dialogue." In the following months, the SEC withdrew 60% of crypto-related lawsuits at an almost fire-sale pace: the Coinbase case was dropped, the Binance case was dropped, the Kraken case was dropped, and even the four-year-long lawsuit against Ripple ended in a settlement.
The key point is the manner of the dismissals: "with prejudice," a legal term meaning that the case cannot be refiled. This gave the market a sense of reassurance: this is a complete reset.
The second key is the opening of licenses.
On December 12, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) approved national trust bank charters for five crypto companies: BitGo, Circle, Fidelity Digital Assets, Paxos, and Ripple. This means they can directly access the Federal Reserve system, providing custody, payment, and clearing services, enjoying the same privileges as traditional banks.
A striking comparison: in 2025, the OCC received 18 bank charter applications; in 2024, there was only 1. Once the floodgates opened, everyone rushed in.
The third key is the GENIUS Act.
On July 18, the first federal crypto legislation in the U.S. was signed into law. This act set rules for stablecoins: 1:1 reserves, monthly disclosures, and priority repayment in bankruptcy. More importantly, it clarified that compliant stablecoins are not securities or commodities and are not under the jurisdiction of the SEC or CFTC.
This is equivalent to issuing a "certificate of good conduct" for stablecoins: banks can confidently engage in stablecoin business, and payment companies can boldly integrate without worrying about being held accountable later.
The SEC's withdrawal of lawsuits eliminated legal risks; the OCC's approval of licenses made banking capabilities accessible; and the passage of the GENIUS Act made stablecoins compliant financial products. With all three keys turning together, a door that had been tightly shut for ten years swung open.
Outside the door stood many people, clutching checks.
The Arms Race of Three Major Buyers
When it comes to the ambition and landscape of mergers and acquisitions in 2025, Ripple is undoubtedly the MVP.
When mentioning Ripple, many veterans in the crypto space might still think of "the company behind XRP"—the one that was sued by the SEC in 2020 and fought a four-year legal battle with regulators. But Ripple after 2024 is a different entity altogether.
The lawsuit has basically settled (the final ruling in August 2024 reduced the fine from 2 billion to 125 million), and the company is sitting on a large amount of cash, beginning to expand aggressively. Their core business has long since transformed: custody, stablecoins, compliant channels—whatever is profitable, they pursue.
This year, Ripple spent 2.7 billion dollars on acquisitions, becoming the third U.S. financial company to complete two billion-dollar-level acquisitions in the same year, following Morgan Stanley and New York Community Bank. The last time Morgan Stanley achieved this was in 2020: 13 billion for E-Trade and 7 billion for Eaton Vance.
Ripple has reached the same scale as Morgan Stanley, and these two core transactions are worth a closer look.
The first transaction was the 1.25 billion dollar acquisition of Hidden Road. This is a top global non-bank prime broker, serving hedge funds, asset management companies, and proprietary trading firms, with business covering multiple asset classes including foreign exchange, derivatives, fixed income, and digital assets.
What is a prime broker? Simply put, it is a company that provides "one-stop back-office services" for institutional investors: if you want to trade, I help you clear; if you want leverage, I lend you money; if you want to custody assets, I help you safeguard them. The prime brokerage business of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley is a cash cow.
After the acquisition, Hidden Road was renamed Ripple Prime. Ripple stepped directly into the core circle of Wall Street.
The second transaction was the 1 billion dollar acquisition of GTreasury. This is a 40-year-old provider of corporate cash management systems, which may not sound sexy, but the client list is impressive: American Airlines, Goodyear, Volvo—these are all Fortune 500 companies. GTreasury processes over 12.5 trillion dollars in payment flows annually.
Looking at these two transactions together, Ripple's strategic map becomes clear.
It is no longer satisfied with being a cross-border payment company; it aims to build an "end-to-end institutional financial stack": corporate cash management with GTreasury, institutional prime brokerage services with Ripple Prime, and cross-border payments using Ripple's own network, with XRP bridging in between. From the CFO's computer to the hedge fund's trading desk, the entire chain is connected.
CEO Brad Garlinghouse stated at the Ripple Swell conference, "Most of our acquisitions focus on traditional finance, with the goal of bringing crypto solutions into it."
Translated, this means: crypto companies are devouring traditional finance.
Coinbase's approach is different. It aims to be the "super app" of the crypto world, a platform where anything can be traded.
Acquiring Deribit for 2.9 billion is the largest deal of the year. Deribit is the world's largest crypto options exchange, with an annual trading volume exceeding 1 trillion dollars and an open interest consistently above 30 billion dollars.
The options market is the main battlefield for institutional investors: hedge funds use options to hedge risks, market makers use options to manage positions, and asset management companies use options to build structured products. Acquiring Deribit is equivalent to securing a ticket to the institutional market.
In addition to Deribit, Coinbase also acquired the on-chain advertising platform Spindl, token management company Liquifi, DeFi options protocol Opyn, meme coin exchange Vector.fun, and prediction market company The Clearing Company.
With a total of 10 acquisitions throughout the year, covering derivatives, DeFi, prediction markets, and meme coin trading, CEO Brian Armstrong's ambition is "Everything Exchange": everything that can be traded should be done on Coinbase.
Kraken's approach is more straightforward: first buy the license, then take on the business.
Acquiring NinjaTrader for 1.5 billion means buying a CFTC futures license. This company has a 20-year history and is a veteran player in the U.S. retail futures trading space. In the U.S., to legally provide futures and derivatives trading services to retail investors, one must hold a CFTC license.
Applying for one? You'd be waiting in line for at least three years, and there's no guarantee of approval. Buying a licensed company? You can go live immediately. Time is space, and paying a 50% premium is still a bargain.
After obtaining the license, Kraken submitted an IPO application in November, targeting a Q1 2026 listing with a valuation of 20 billion dollars. It is no longer just a pure crypto exchange; it is a licensed multi-asset trading platform.
The Calculations of Stripe and Others
Crypto companies are devouring traditional finance, and traditional finance is also seeping back into crypto.
The most typical case is Stripe's acquisition of Bridge.
In February 2025, this payment giant acquired Bridge for 1.1 billion dollars: a stablecoin infrastructure company with only 58 employees, which had a Series A valuation of only 200 million dollars. Stripe paid a 5.5 times premium, setting a record for the largest acquisition in the company's history.
Why is a 58-person startup worth 1.1 billion?
Because Bridge has something that is hard to buy with money and time: it is the most mature API platform in the stablecoin space, with clients including Coinbase and SpaceX, allowing businesses to access stablecoin capabilities as easily as calling a regular payment interface. The founding team comes from Coinbase and Square, possessing a deep understanding of both payments and crypto.
Stripe doing it themselves? At least two years. Buying Bridge? They could launch the product next month.
Stripe CEO Patrick Collison referred to stablecoins as "the room-temperature superconductor of financial services." This metaphor accurately captures the essence of stablecoins: they allow money to flow like information, 24/7, across borders, at nearly zero cost. Traditional cross-border remittances take 3 to 5 days and incur fees of 3% to 5%; stablecoin transfers arrive in seconds, with fees of less than 1 cent.
After the acquisition, Stripe launched three products within six months: the "Stablecoin Financial Accounts," covering 101 countries; a stablecoin spending card in partnership with Visa; and the Open Issuance platform, enabling any company to issue its own stablecoin.
Stripe's ambition is clear: to redefine cross-border payments with stablecoins.
Old money on Wall Street is also moving.
In October, JPMorgan announced it would accept BTC and ETH as collateral, starting with ETF shares and later expanding to spot trading. This marks the first time Wall Street's largest bank has officially included crypto assets in its collateral scope. According to Bloomberg, an alliance of 10 major banks is exploring the joint issuance of G7 currency stablecoins.
Paxos acquired the institutional-grade MPC wallet platform Fordefi for over 100 million dollars. Fordefi serves over 300 institutions, with a monthly trading volume of 120 billion dollars. After the acquisition, Paxos can provide a one-stop service for "stablecoin issuance + asset tokenization + DeFi custody."
Five years ago, Wall Street and the crypto space were still looking down on each other. Wall Street viewed crypto as a scam and a bubble, while the crypto community saw Wall Street as antiquated and a vested interest. Now, they are sitting at the same negotiating table, pricing each other's assets with real money.
The boundaries are becoming blurred. The definitions of "crypto companies" and "financial companies" are being rewritten.
Epilogue
But everyone is racing against time.
On June 5, 2025, Circle went public on the NYSE, soaring 168% on its first day and accumulating a 247% increase over two days. This is the best first-day performance among IPOs that raised over 500 million dollars since 1980. The market priced the USDC issuer at a valuation of 16.7 billion dollars, raising 1.1 billion dollars.
An investment banking analyst calculated that, based on the issue price, Circle left 1.76 billion dollars "on the table," marking the seventh-largest IPO pricing error in history. In other words, the market's enthusiasm for the stablecoin sector far exceeded the underwriters' expectations.
Following Circle, Bullish and eToro went public in succession. In 2025, a total of 11 crypto companies completed IPOs, raising a cumulative 14.6 billion dollars. In comparison, only 4 companies did so in 2024, raising 310 million dollars.
The IPO pipeline for 2026 is even more crowded. Kraken is valued at 20 billion, aiming for a Q1 listing; BitGo's revenue has quadrupled and has already submitted a confidential application; Gemini and Grayscale are also in line. Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley predicts that this wave of IPOs could create nearly 100 billion dollars in market value.
But 2026 is also a midterm election year in the U.S.
Historical patterns are clear: the party of the sitting president typically loses congressional seats in midterm elections. If the Republican Party loses its majority in the House or Senate, the window for crypto-friendly policies may narrow or even close. The SEC chair may change, the legislative process may stall, and regulatory winds may shift again.
This explains why everyone is racing to get ahead. Mergers and acquisitions need to be completed before the window closes, IPOs need to be priced before market sentiment reverses, and licenses need to be obtained before policies tighten.
The time window may only be 18 months.
Returning to the initial question: what is Wall Street betting on?
They are betting on the arrival of the "bidirectional acquisition" era. Crypto companies are buying traditional finance's licenses, clients, and compliance capabilities; traditional finance is buying crypto's technology, pipelines, and innovation capabilities. Both sides are mutually infiltrating, and the boundaries are gradually disappearing. In three to five years, there may be no distinction between "crypto companies" and "traditional financial companies," only "financial companies."
The 8.6 billion dollar merger wave in 2025 is essentially an arms race for "compliance infrastructure." The winners of this race will not be those fixated on K-line charts chasing highs and lows, but long-termists who position themselves early, secure licenses, and build full-stack capabilities.
Retail investors are still guessing tops and bottoms, while institutions are already buying the entire track.
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