Robinhood $200M Bitstamp Acquisition

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Good Morning.

The market is up. Bitcoin is inching closer to making another new ATH as spot ETF inflows are on an 18-day inflow streak. Alts are doing decent, perhaps thanks to Iggy Azalea selling merch that can only be bought by her $MOTHER token.

Talking about real-world adoption.

In Today's Email:

• What Matters: Robinhood to acquire Bitstamp 🤝 

• Founders Highlight: Chris of Renegade ⚫️ 

• Deal Flows: M^0 $35M Series A💰

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WHAT MATTERS

Robinhood to Acquire Bitstamp in $200M Deal

State of play: Robinhood is set to acquire Bitstamp in a $200M deal expected to close in the first half of 2025.

• Barclays Capital Inc. advised Robinhood, while Galaxy Digital Partners LLC advised Bitstamp in the deal.

• Bitstamp, founded in 2011, is one of the oldest active crypto exchanges.

• Bitstamp holds over 50 licenses globally.

• Bitstamp also provides staking and lending products. Robinhood views these offerings as enhancing its crypto services.

• Bitstamp's team will join forces with Robinhood as part of the deal.

Why it Matters: The acquisition signals Robinhood's increasing focus in the crypto market.

• The mobile stock trading unicorn plans to utilize Bitstamp to reach its crypto customers in the EU, UK, US, and Asia.

For builders and investors: Robinhood is pretty much the mobile trading app for the younger generation. If it can funnel those same consumers into the crypto markets, it should help increase retail flow in a meaningful way.

BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Chris Bender of Renegade

Intro: Chris Bender is the founder of Renegade, an on-chain dark pool, an MPC-based DEX for anonymous crosses at midpoint prices.

Previous background: Bender started his career as a researcher at Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research, he was also the president of Machine Learning at Berkeley. Before Renegade, Bender interned as an ML engineer at Tesla.

• Bender studied pure mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley.

The big idea: Bender and Renegade aim to bring private trading to DeFi.

• Renegafe’s dark pool enables large institutional traders to buy or sell large quantities of tokens without informing the wider market.

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INSIGHTS

QCP Capital and VanEck Prediction

State of play: QCP Capital said that upcoming US jobless claims and CPI data could trigger new all-time highs for Bitcoin.

• QCP expected a lower jobless claims report and the CPI release next week, which might trigger a new ATH for BTC.

• However, the jobless claims climb to a 4-week high of 229,000.

• QCP suggested that momentum could be added to the rally as the market prices in potential rate cuts.

• The Bank of Canada was the first major central bank to cut interest rates this year, reducing them a quarter-point to 4.75%.

• The European Central Bank is expected to follow suit and cut rates by the same amount to 4.25%.

Meanwhile, VanEck analysts raised their 2030 price prediction for Ethereum to $22,000.

• The prediction was influenced by Ether ETF news, scaling progress, and their analysis of on-chain data.

DEAL FLOWS

M^0 Raises $35M in Series A Funding

Deal flows soared this week, we saw $260M+ in deals 💼 

M^0 announced its mainnet launch as well as the closing of a $35M Series A round by Bain Capital Crypto for its stablecoin issuance platform.

• M^0 is a Decentralized infrastructure provider that allows institutional clients to mint stablecoins based on high-quality collateral, such as United States Treasurys.

• M^0 sets new standards in terms of multi-issuance, distributed collateral storage, decentralized governance, and interoperability.

• The vision is to build a robust, credibly-neutral, next-generation backend for fintech frontends.

Deal flows in the past week:

• Glacier Network, $8M Angel & Seed Round

• DuelNow, Undisclosed $ Seed Round

• Nubit, $12M Seed+ Round

• Xociety, $7.5M pre-Series A

• Mountain Protocol, $8M Series A

• Fhenix, $15M Series A

• M^0 ,$35M Series A

• Avail, $43M Series A

• Kraken, $100M+ pre-IPO round (ongoing)

• GoPlus, $10M Strategic Round

• XREX Group, $18.75M Strategic Round

• The Sandbox, $20M Strategic Round

QUICK BITES

• Base overtakes OP Mainnet.

• Alchemy launches rollup tool.

• Robinhood buys Bitstamp exchange.

• Kraken explores a pre-IPO funding round.

• BNB hits ATH as BNB Chain metrics improve.

• Sushi goes live on the Bitcoin sidechain Rootstock.

• Binance resumes Mastercard payments for crypto.

• Bybit allows Chinese expats to trade on its platform.

• EigenLayer's TVL surpasses $20B for the first time.

• NYAG sues NovaTech and AWS Mining for a $1B take.

• Taiko enables permissionless sequencing and proving.

• Franklin Templeton exploring crypto funds for tokens.

• Telegram launches a digital mini-app payment system.

• US spot bitcoin ETFs record 18-day streak of net inflows.

• State Secretary urged to rescue detained Binance exec in Nigeria.

• Unstoppable Domains-Blockchain(.)com plan DNS-enabled web3 domain.

NOTEWORTHY READS

• DWF Ventures’ read on the TON blockchain.

• Castle Island’s read on Monad and stablecoins.

• Arthur Hayes’ read on the dollar-yen exchange rate.

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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.