According to a November 13 announcement, Arca and BlockTower Capital have agreed to merge into a unified cryptocurrency investment platform.
“Investors have been calling for regulated digital asset investment products for years,” Arca CEO Rayne Steinberg said in a statement.
Steinberg added that the merger will help both companies gain “the resources and expertise to effectively manage our current products and expand our investment options.”
Both Arca and Blocktower are U.S. registered investment advisors. BlockTower’s venture capital arm, BlockTower Venture Capital, will continue to operate independently, the companies said.
“Competing in the maturing digital asset space and serving investors requires a continuous effort to attract the best talent. By merging with Arca, we are excited to immediately create a stronger investment team,” Ari Paul, chief investment officer at BlockTower, said in a statement.
Source: Arca
relevant: Coinbase acquires on-chain payment platform Utopia
Last May, Blocktower Capital reportedly suffered losses after an exploit led to a portion of the company’s cryptocurrency holdings being leaked. According to Bloomberg, it controlled about $1.7 billion at the time of the hack.
Merger activity is heating up in Web3 as companies look to expand their operations and add additional capabilities.
Coinbase announced on November 13 that it has acquired Utopia Labs to build the cryptocurrency exchange’s on-chain payment infrastructure.
The team at Utopia Labs will join Base, Coinbase’s layer 2 scaling network, “to accelerate the on-chain payments roadmap within Coinbase Wallet,” Coinbase said in a blog post.
“There is a natural flywheel here: Base supports developers building on-chain apps, those apps attract on-chain users, Wallet onboards those users, which in turn gets more users building on-chain apps. We encourage you to build,” Coinbase said.
Last October, payments giant Stripe acquired stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion to fulfill its promise to add support for stablecoin payments.
On July 9, DeFi Technologies agreed to acquire trading desk Stillman Digital in an all-stock deal that analysts say will transform the Canadian cryptocurrency platform into a “smaller version of Galaxy Digital.”
“This acquisition reflects the need for cryptocurrency platforms to pursue scale,” said Mark Palmer, equity analyst at Benchmark. “So that we can get through it well.” In July.
magazine: Can cryptocurrency exchanges be trusted after the FTX collapse?