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- 🐦🔥 Crypto M&A is Back, Baby
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This Edition is Presented by Bitso’s Stablecoin Conference
Frontera is an official media partner of Bitso’s Stablecoin Conference 2025.
We’ll be on the ground in Mexico City this August 27–28, covering the builders, the breakthroughs, and ideas reshaping LatAm’s financial future.
Use the code FRONTERA10 for 10% off your ticket here. See you there.
🔥 Crypto M&A is Heating Up
After a brutal bear market, crypto M&A is back, baby. And by back, I mean we’re in the middle of a full-blown stratospheric bull market frenzy that shows no signs of slowing down.
So that's great.
In Q2 2025, crypto mergers and acquisitions hit an all-time high, with 79 total deals and $4.9B in transaction value.
That blows past the previous record set in Q1 2025 and marks the first time since 2021 that M&A activity has reached this scale.
To put it in perspective: from the collapse of Terra in Q2 2022 to the end of 2024, the entire crypto sector saw around $5B in total M&A deal flow. The same amount we just witnessed in a single quarter.
Industry giants are now playing offense while the mindset has shifted from survival to expansion.
The only logical next step is to put our corporate development hats at Frontera, and predict where the next wave of acquisitions will hit across Frontier Markets.
🕯️ Recent Strategic Acquisitions
This year has seen a flurry of high-profile crypto acquisitions, 143 to be exact. I won’t, and can’t name all. But I will write about a few.
Below is a rundown of some I found relevant:
Stripe acquires Bridge (Feb 4, 2025 – $1.1B): Bridge’s stablecoin rails will now power Stripe’s ambitions, enabling businesses to move money globally at internet speed.
Kraken acquires NinjaTrader (Mar 20, 2025 – $1.5B): A landmark TradFi–crypto crossover to expand beyond crypto and into regulated financial products.
Coinbase acquires Deribit (May 8, 2025 – $2.9B): Coinbase grabbed the world’s leading crypto options exchange (~80% market share) to dominate derivatives.
Robinhood acquires Bitstamp (Jun 2, 2024 – $200M): The deal brings Bitstamp’s 50+ licenses and institutional trading capabilities, accelerating Robinhood’s expansion into Europe and Asia.
Stripe acquires Privy (Jun 11, 2025 – Undisclosed): Continuing its crypto push, Stripe picked up a wallet infrastructure startup to enable seamless non-native unboarding.
Monad acquires Portal (Jul 9, 2025 – Undisclosed): Layer-1 blockchain Monad bought Portal to beef up onchain stablecoin payments with plug-and-play infrastructure for high-speed txns. Shoutout Raj.
Polymarket acquires QCX (Jul 21, 2025 – $112M): Polymarket bought QCX (a CFTC-licensed exchange/clearinghouse) to re-enter the U.S. legally after years barred by regulators.
🧨 Business is Booming
Crypto M&A is booming because the industry is finally acting like it's here to stay. After years of “its so over”s and “we’re so back”s, we’re now seeing signs of real maturity.
And in finance, maturity looks like consolidation. When markets mature, companies stop trying to build everything themselves.
Instead, they buy talent, users, and infrastructure. Exactly what's happening as we speak.
Four forces are driving this wave:
Infrastructure is the new gold.
There’s a gold rush for pick-and-shovel plays. Everyone, from exchanges to TradFi payment giants, wants a piece of the new financial plumbing system: stablecoins.
Regulatory clarity.
Trump’s administration is acting like the new sheriff in town. U.S. enforcement has eased compared to the crackdowns of 2022, while the government passes pro-crypto bills we couldn't have even dreamed of. Regulatory green lights reduce deal risk, so buyers are pulling the trigger on acquisitions that were on hold.
Depressed valuations post-2022 bear.
Last year’s crypto winter wiped out sky-high valuations, turning former unicorns into affordable prey. For well-capitalized acquirers, this is a buyer’s market.
We’ve never been so back.
Quite literally. Crypto is at an all-time high. One Bitcoin trades at $120,000. And let’s not pretend prices don’t affect how buyers think.
This is a reflexive industry, after all.
🧯 Predicting M&A in Frontier Markets
By “Frontier Markets” I mean both 1) under-tapped regions (like Latin America) in the process of transitioning into fully developed ones, and 2) emerging crypto verticals just finding product-market fit while entering their expansion phase.
We’re coining that term.
And like I said in the intro, we’re also now gonna do some predictions, mentioning the four categories where we expect the next wave of crypto M&A to hit.
Think of this as Frontera’s corp-dev forecast: a fast-forward look at the deals we wouldn't be surprised to see happen soon.
The Frontera corporate development team pictured below:
So let’s take a look at the Frontier Markets:
1. Stablecoin Issuers
Why it's hot: I have never heard the word “stablecoin” used more than during the week of Circle’s IPO. It almost 10xed in less than two weeks, and institutions went wild.
Next up are issuers and regional stablecoins, our Frontera Thesis here. Emerging markets need liquid, compliant, local currency stablecoins.
Who’s buying:
Global stablecoin giants (USDC, Tether) that want regional liquidity and licenses.
Exchanges that need local on/off ramps, fast.
Fintechs like Nubank who want to integrate their own finchain stack.
Who’s next:
2. Local Wallets
Why it's hot: Local wallets have local users which are a synonym for loyal soldiers. Extremely ideal for companies looking to expand their presence as M&A keeps booming.
Who’s buying:
Global wallets (MetaMask, Phantom, Zerion) that lack local presence.
Exchanges (Kraken, KuCoin) that want ready-made distribution and UX.
Fintechs and superapps (Mercado Pago, Nubank) expanding into crypto.
Who’s next:
Meru: Stablecoin wallet for Colombians and Venezuelans.
Lemon Cash: Argentine wallet with millions of users.
3. B2B Payments
Why it's hot: Remember people now want pick-and-shovel plays. This is it. Businesses in frontier markets are skipping legacy rails and embracing stablecoin payouts for cheaper, faster cross-border payments.
Who’s buying:
Payment giants (Visa, Mastercard, Stripe) racing to modernize infrastructure.
Who’s next:
4. Onchain FX
Why it's hot: The world is going onchain. First come the local stablecoins (Stablecoin Issuers) and then comes the infrastructure to trade them directly, instantly and 24/7 in the new global onchain FX layer.
Who’s buying:
Crypto custodians (Anchorage, Fireblocks) offering instant FX to clients.
Market makers (Jump, Wintermute) securing liquidity and fee flows.
Who’s next:
At the end of the day, the logic is simple: if crypto is here to stay, and it sure looks like it is, the race is on to own the infrastructure that powers it.
If the first wave of acquisitions happened in New York and Singapore, the next will hit Bogotá and Buenos Aires.
The future will be built on Frontier Markets. Both definitions included.
📰 LatAm Crypto News 📰
🇧🇷 Brazil
After 18 months off due to regulatory uncertainties, PicPay resumes crypto trading for 35M users with 12 tokens. They're relaunching due to Brazil's maturing rules and rising customer demand.
VERT launched a platform on the XRP Ledger to manage private credit, debuting with a $130M tokenized CRA to bring transparency and efficiency to private credit and capital markets.
🇲🇽 Mexico
Mexican real estate firm Grupo Murano plans to invest up to $10B over 5 years to build a BTC treasury, becoming the first public company in Mexico to do so.
🇦🇷 Argentina
Ripio partnered with FinTech Tapi to let users pay 5,000+ services directly with crypto from its app, boosting real-world crypto utility.