Crypto M&A Surges to $8.6B in 2025

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Crypto dealmaking is heating up as clearer rules push the industry into a consolidation phase. With M&A reaching $8.6B in 2025, capital is moving toward compliant, scalable platforms and new financial institutions.

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In Today's Email:

• What Matters: Crypto M&A Surges to $8.6B in 2025 🤑 

• Founders Highlight: Palmer Luckey of Erebor 👨 

• Deal Flows: HashKey Raises $250M for Fourth Blockchain Fund 💰️ 

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WHAT MATTERS

Crypto M&A Surges to $8.6B in 2025

State of play: Crypto mergers and acquisitions reached a record $8.6B in 2025, up sharply from $2.17B in 2024, driven by a more supportive regulatory environment in the United States and a global push for compliance readiness.

• The shift under Donald Trump, including the passage of the GENIUS Act, gave institutions clearer rules around stablecoins and tokenized assets.

• This clarity helped unlock capital and encouraged consolidation across the sector.

• The largest deals included Coinbase acquiring Deribit for $2.9B, Kraken buying NinjaTrader for $1.5B, and Ripple purchasing Hidden Road for $1.25B.

Beyond US policy, a rush for regulatory licenses also played a major role. As new compliance frameworks such as the EU’s MiCA come into force, firms are increasingly acquiring licensed entities to accelerate market entry and meet regulatory standards.

Why it matters: Record M&A activity shows crypto has entered a consolidation phase, driven by clearer regulation and lower policy risk.

Our take: Clear rules favor teams and capital that can move early and adapt to compliance driven growth.

For builders and investors: The environment is becoming more structured and competitive.

BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Palmer Luckey of Erebor

Intro: Palmer Luckey is the Co-Founder of Erebor, a new financial institution aiming to serve the banking needs of AI, crypto, defense, and manufacturing tech companies.

Previous background: Before Erebor, Palmer was best known for founding Oculus VR and creating the Oculus Rift, a product that helped restart the modern VR industry. Oculus was acquired by Facebook in 2014.

• After leaving Facebook in 2017, he founded Anduril Industries, a military technology firm focused on autonomous drones and defense systems.

The big idea: Through Erebor, Palmer aims ’s big idea is to build a regulated bank tailored to the US innovation economy, combining traditional banking with crypto related services in one platform.

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INSIGHTS

Uniswap Activates Fee Switch and UNI Burn

Uniswap governance has approved the UNIfication proposal with near unanimous support, fundamentally reshaping the protocol’s economics.

• The change activates the long awaited fee switch, redirecting part of trading fees and Unichain sequencer fees from liquidity providers to the protocol to continuously burn UNI, creating a deflationary supply model.

• The proposal also consolidates operations under Uniswap Labs, removes interface and API fees, and establishes a UNI funded growth budget.

• A one time burn of 100M UNI will occur after a short timelock.

• According to founder Hayden Adams, this marks a major shift as DeFi enters a more mainstream and regulator aware phase.

DEAL FLOWS

HashKey Raises $250M for Fourth Blockchain Fund

Deal flows slowed down this week - we saw $100M+ in deals 💼 

HashKey Capital has raised $250M in the first close of its HashKey Fintech Multi-Strategy Fund IV, targeting a total of $500M.

• The fund will focus on blockchain infrastructure and real world applications, including crossover between TradFi x Crypto.

• HashKey now manages over $1B in assets and is one of Asia’s largest digital asset investors.

• HashKey has a track record that includes early backing of Ethereum and involvement in launching spot crypto ETFs in Hong Kong.

Deal flows in the past week:

• Coinbax, $4.2M Seed Round

• DAWN, $13M Series B Round

• Fuse Energy, $70M Series B Round

• Rainbow Wallet, $3M Public Token Sale

• Otomato, $2M Strategic Round

• Gensyn Foundation, $16.14M Public Token Sale

QUICK BITES

• Best and worst performing crypto stocks of 2025.

• Crypto derivatives volume explode to $86T in 2025.

• Trust Wallet users lose at least $6M in security breach.

• Uniswap governance passes major 'UNIfication' proposal.

• Crypto mergers and acquisitions hit record $8.6B in 2025.

• Aave governance vote ends in rejection after community pushback.

• Spot BTC, ETH ETFs see outflows amid Christmas holiday derisking.

• HashKey secures $250M for new crypto fund amid ‘significant interest.’

NOTEWORTHY READS & MEME

• Marc Zeller’s read on DeFi will win.

• ether.fi Venture’s read on Making Sense of HIP-3.

• Stepan’s read on the state of the stablecoin economy and its participants.

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Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.