Original title: "133 Deals, $8.6 Billion: Who Bought Up the Crypto Industry in 2025?"
Original author: Lin Wanwan, Beating
The crypto market in 2025 will be fragmented.
Bitcoin has retreated by over 30% this year, Altcoin have suffered heavy losses, and cries of "crypto is dead" are echoing everywhere. Those new investors who bought in at the beginning of the year have seen their accounts shrunk by more than half; some have already uninstalled their trading platform apps, while others are still stubbornly holding on, hoping to break even. Sentiment in the crypto community has plummeted to its lowest point since the FTX collapse in 2022.
But amidst this mess, another group of people were frantically buying up goods.
According to PitchBook data, the total value of mergers and acquisitions in the crypto industry reached $8.6 billion in 2025, with 267 deals, representing an 18% year-over-year increase. This figure is nearly four times that of 2024 and exceeds the total of the previous four years. Using Architect Partners' broader statistical scope, the total amount is $12.9 billion.
The scale of top transactions is staggering: Coinbase spent $2.9 billion to acquire options giant Deribit, setting a record for the largest acquisition in the history of the crypto industry; Kraken spent $1.5 billion to acquire traditional futures platform NinjaTrader, which is called "the largest TradeFi and Crypto integration transaction in history"; Ripple acquired Wall Street prime brokerage Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, officially entering the heart of institutional finance.
Retail investors panicked and sold at a loss, while institutional investors built up positions on the ruins.
Interestingly, these institutions weren't buying cryptocurrency. If they were bullish on cryptocurrency prices, they could have simply bought BTC; why spend billions acquiring companies?
What they bought were trading platforms, licenses, custodians, payment channels, and clearing systems.
They are buying up the entire industry's infrastructure at buy the dips.
This is reminiscent of Wall Street after the 2008 financial crisis. Lehman Brothers collapsed, Bear Stearns disappeared, but JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs survived and even took the opportunity to acquire a host of assets. After the crisis, the strong became stronger, and industry concentration increased significantly.
A similar scenario is unfolding in the crypto industry in 2025.
Why do traditional financial institutions "buy the dips"?
Why 2025? Because all three keys turned at the same time.
The first key is the change of leadership at the SEC.
During Gary Gensler's era, the crypto industry lived in a state of "Schrödinger's compliance": you didn't know if the token you issued was a security, you didn't know when your trading platform business would be deemed illegal, and you didn't know if your company would still exist when you woke up tomorrow. Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, Ripple, Uniswap, OpenSea—almost every well-known company has received subpoenas or well notices from the SEC.
This uncertainty is the enemy of mergers and acquisitions. No reputable financial institution is willing to spend $1 billion to buy a company that could be targeted for regulatory "elimination" at any time. How to conduct due diligence? How to build a valuation model? How to price legal risks? All these are unanswered questions.
In January 2025, the Trump administration took office, and the SEC's attitude underwent a 180-degree turn. On his first day in office, Acting Chairman Mark Uyeda established the Crypto Task Force, announcing a shift from "enforcement" to "dialogue." In the following months, the SEC withdrew 60% of its 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, landmark case against Ripple ended in a settlement.
The key is the method of withdrawal: "with prejudice," a legal term meaning that a new lawsuit cannot be filed. This reassured the market: this is a complete turn of events.
The second key is the license plate release gate.
On December 12, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) approved national trust banking licenses 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, and enjoying the same privileges as traditional banks.
A comparison of figures speaks volumes: In 2025, the OCC received 18 applications for banking licenses; in 2024, only one. Once the gates opened, everyone rushed in.
The third key is the GENIUS Act.
On July 18, the first federal crypto law in the United States was signed into law. This bill sets rules for stablecoins: 1:1 reserves, monthly disclosure, and priority repayment in bankruptcy. More importantly, it clarifies that compliant stablecoins are not considered securities or commodities and are not regulated by the SEC or CFTC.
This is tantamount to issuing a "good citizen certificate" to stablecoins: banks can confidently conduct stablecoin business, and payment companies can boldly integrate them without worrying about being held accountable later.
The SEC's withdrawal of the lawsuit eliminated legal risks; the OCC's approval of the license made banking capabilities available; and the passage of the GENIUS Act made stablecoins compliant financial products. With these three keys turned together, a door that had been closed for ten years was opened.
The door was crowded with people, clutching checks in their hands.
Arms race among three major buyers
When it comes to the ambition and scale of mergers and acquisitions in 2025, Ripple is undoubtedly the MVP.
When it comes to Ripple, many veterans in the crypto might still remember "that company, XRP"—the Ripple that was sued by the SEC in 2020 and fought a four-year legal battle with regulators. But Ripple after 2024 is a completely different species.
With the lawsuit essentially settled (final verdict in August 2024, fine reduced from 2 billion to 125 million), the company, flush with cash, began a frenzied expansion. Their core business had already transformed: custody, stablecoins, and compliant channels—they did whatever was profitable.
That year, Ripple spent $2.7 billion on acquisitions, becoming the third U.S. financial company, after Morgan Stanley and New York Community Bank, to complete two $1 billion-level acquisitions in the same year. The last time Morgan Stanley did this was in 2020: $13 billion for E-Trade and $7 billion for Eaton Vance.
Ripple has reached the same level as Morgan Stanley, and these two key transactions are worth examining closely.
The first acquisition was the $1.25 billion purchase of Hidden Road, a top global non-bank prime brokerage firm 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's a company that provides "one-stop back-office services" to institutional investors: if you want to trade, I'll clear the transactions for you; if you want leverage, I'll lend you money; if you need asset custody, I'll safeguard it for you. Prime brokerage businesses at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are cash cows.
Following the acquisition, Hidden Road was renamed Ripple Prime. Ripple had taken a significant step into the inner circle of Wall Street.
The second acquisition was the $1 billion purchase of GTreasury. This is a 40-year-old provider of corporate treasury management systems—it doesn't sound glamorous, but its client list is staggering: American Airlines, Goodyear, and Volvo, all Fortune 500 companies. GTreasury processes over $12.5 trillion in payments annually.
By looking at these two transactions together, Ripple's strategic roadmap becomes clear.
It's no longer content with being just a cross-border payment company; it aims to build an "end-to-end institutional financial stack": corporate fund management uses GTreasury, institutional prime brokerage services use Ripple Prime, cross-border payments use Ripple's own network, and XRP acts as a bridge in between. From the CFO's computer to the hedge fund's trading desk, the entire chain is seamlessly integrated.
At the Ripple Swell conference, CEO Brad Garlinghouse made a very frank statement: "Most of our acquisitions have focused on traditional finance with the aim of bringing crypto solutions into it."
To put it another way: 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 everything can be traded.
The $2.9 billion acquisition of Deribit is the biggest move of the year. Deribit is the world's largest cryptocurrency options exchange, with an annual trading volume of over $1 trillion and open interest consistently above $30 billion.
The options market is the main battleground for institutional investors: hedge funds use options to hedge risks, market makers use options to manage positions, and asset management companies use options to construct structured products. Acquiring Deribit is equivalent to securing entry into the institutional market.
In addition to Deribit, Coinbase has also acquired 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.
The company made 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 will be done on Coinbase.
Kraken's approach is more direct: buy the license first, then take on business.
The $1.5 billion acquisition of NinjaTrader includes a CFTC futures license. This company, with 20 years of history, is a veteran player in the US retail futures trading sector. In the US, a CFTC license is required to legally provide futures and derivatives trading services to retail investors.
Apply yourself? The waiting list starts at three years, and approval isn't guaranteed. Buy a licensed company? Go live immediately. Trading time for opportunity, even a 50% premium is a bargain.
After obtaining its license, Kraken filed for an IPO in November, aiming for a Q1 2026 listing with a valuation of $20 billion. It is no longer just a pure crypto exchage; it is a licensed multi-asset trading platform.
Stripes' plans
Crypto companies are devouring traditional finance, while traditional finance is also penetrating crypto in the opposite direction.
The most typical example is Stripe's acquisition of Bridge.
In February 2025, the payments giant acquired Bridge for $1.1 billion: a stablecoin infrastructure company with only 58 employees and a Series A valuation of only $200 million. Stripe paid a 5.5x premium, marking the largest acquisition in the company's history.
Why is a startup with 58 employees worth $1.1 billion?
Because Bridge has something that money and time can hardly buy: it's the most mature API platform in the stablecoin field, with clients including Coinbase and SpaceX, allowing businesses to access stablecoin capabilities just like calling a regular payment interface. The founding team comes from Coinbase and Square, possessing a deep understanding of both payments and crypto.
Stripe should build it themselves? At least two years. Buy Bridge? Products could launch next month.
Stripe CEO Patrick Collison calls stablecoins "room temperature superconductors for financial services." This analogy aptly captures the essence of stablecoins: they allow money to flow like information, 24/7, across borders, and at near-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.
Following the acquisition, Stripe launched three products within six months: "Stablecoin Financial Accounts," a stablecoin account covering 101 countries; a stablecoin spending card in partnership with Visa; and the Open Issuance platform, which allows 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 making moves.
In October, JPMorgan announced it would accept BTC and ETH as collateral, starting with ETF shares and later expanding to spot trading. This marked the first time one of Wall Street's largest banks had formally included crypto assets in its collateral pool. According to Bloomberg, a consortium of 10 major banks is exploring the joint issuance of a G7 currency stablecoin.
Paxos has acquired Fordefi, an institutional-grade MPC wallet platform, for over $100 million. Fordefi serves more than 300 institutions and has a monthly trading volume of $120 billion. Following the acquisition, Paxos can now offer a one-stop service encompassing stablecoin issuance, asset tokenization, and DeFi custody.
Five years ago, Wall Street and the crypto community looked down on each other. Wall Street thought crypto was a scam and a bubble, while the crypto community thought Wall Street was old-fashioned and a vested interest group. Now, they are sitting at the same negotiating table, pricing each other's assets with real money.
The boundaries are blurring. The definitions of "crypto company" and "financial company" are being rewritten.
end
But everyone is racing against time.
On June 5, 2025, Circle went public on the New York Stock Exchange, surging 168% on its first day and rising 247% over two days. This was the best first-day performance among IPOs that raised more than $500 million since 1980. The market valued the USDC issuer at $16.7 billion, raising $1.1 billion.
An investment bank analyst calculated that, based on the offering price, Circle had a staggering $1.76 billion "left on the table," making it the seventh-largest IPO pricing error in history. In other words, market enthusiasm for the stablecoin sector far exceeded the underwriters' expectations.
Following Circle, Bullish and eToro went public. In 2025, 11 crypto companies completed IPOs, raising a total of $14.6 billion. In comparison, only 4 companies did so in 2024, raising a total of $310 million.
The IPO pipeline is even more crowded in 2026. Kraken is valued at $20 billion and aims to go public in the first quarter; BitGo's revenue has quadrupled and it has already filed for confidentiality; Gemini and Grayscale are both in the queue. Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley predicts that this wave of IPOs could create a market capitalization of nearly $100 billion.
But 2026 is also a US midterm election year.
Historical patterns are clear: a president's party typically loses congressional seats in the midterm elections. If the Republicans lose their majority in the House or Senate, the window for crypto-friendly policies could narrow or even close. The SEC chairman may be replaced, the legislative process may stall, and the regulatory landscape may shift again.
This explains why everyone is rushing to get started. 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 window of opportunity may only be 18 months.
Returning to the initial question: What is Wall Street betting on?
The bet is on the arrival of an era of "two-way acquisitions." Crypto companies buy licenses, customers, and compliance capabilities from traditional financial institutions; traditional financial institutions buy crypto technology, infrastructure, and innovation capabilities. The two sides will increasingly overlap, blurring the lines between them. In three to five years, there may be no distinction between "crypto companies" and "traditional financial companies"—only "financial companies."
The $8.6 billion M&A wave in 2025 is essentially an arms race over "compliance infrastructure." The winners of this race will not be those who chase rising and falling prices by staring at candlestick charts, but rather long-term thinkers who position themselves early, acquire licenses, and build full-stack capabilities.
While retail investors are still trying to guess the top and bottom, institutional investors are already buying into the entire sector.
