Areta: Crypto M&A tops $40b in 2025 as buyers seek scale and speed

Key Points

1. This year's crypto M&A deal volume has surpassed all previous years combined, with trading infrastructure, staking, payments, and on-chain deals leading the trend.

2. Four strategic battlegrounds are driving the acquisition frenzy: institutional trading desks, licensing expansion, stablecoin adoption for B2B payments, and decentralized organization mergers.

3. Examples include Robinhood acquiring Bitstamp for licensing and Swift acquiring AZ Crypto to secure key operations in-house.

4. Stripe and MoonPay have made acquisitions to capture the booming crypto payments market, with nearly 80% of crypto businesses now using stablecoins for B2B payments.

5. On-chain mergers face unique challenges due to the lack of clear frameworks and processes, differing from traditional M&A deals.