$400M Poloniex Acquisition by Goldman Sachs-Backed Venture Circle - Cryptocurrency Podcast by Coin.FM - Bitcoin, Crypto and Blockchain News
Description
Episode #16
Circle, a peer-to-peer payments technology company founded in 2013, has officially announced it’s acquisition of Poloniex, a popular cryptocurrency exchange.
Poloniex is the 18th largest cryptocurrency exchange by trade, according to CoinMarketCap.com.
Circle already services plenty of big money “whales” in the cryptocurrency market through its Circle Trade offering, which provides over-the-counter transactions with minimums of $250,000 USD.
Circle also provides the Circle Pay app, a direct competitor to Paypal’s Venmo, which lets users send money with via text message.
So, this foray into servicing small crypto-traders seems like a natural evolution.
Except that Circle’s apparently been there before…
Up until late 2016, Circle Pay also operated as a bitcoin wallet service to buy and sell bitcoins. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_(company)#cite_note-11 ; https://blog.circle.com/2016/12/06/spark-new-markets-app-messaging-and-bitcoin-changes/)
Apparently, Circle has decided to pivot — again — and the decision is making big waves, especially considering that Goldman Sachs is a major investor in the financial startup.
Yes, the same Goldman Sachs that, in 2017, said there was “no need for cryptocurrency” — and then was rumored to have plans to open a crypto trading desk in 2018 — and then denied it just a few weeks ago.
This move gets Goldman Sach’s skin solidly in the game… like it or not.
Things do change mighty fast in the crypto sphere!
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