Slovenian founded cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp has been acquired by the Belgium investment company NXMH, the Bitstamp founder & CEO, Nejc Kodric announced. The amount of the transaction officially remains undisclosed, even though some European media reported that the deal is closed at $400 million. For Bitstamp’s CEO, this deal will strengthen Bitstamp’s positioning for growth thus providing opportunities to better serve their customers.
The company’s team, as Kodric explains, hasn’t considered so far to sell the company, even though it has been recently approached by four investors.
“Bitstamp has been regularly approached by suitors for quite some time. The reason why we finally decided to sell the company is a combination of the quality of the buyer, the quality of the offer and the fact that the industry is at a point where consolidation makes sense. A major factor in agreeing to the sale is that the mission, leadership and vision of the company remains the same”, writes Kodric in his official letter published on Bitstamp’s website.
Reportedly, with this acquisition NXMH acquired 80% of the stakes in Bitstamp, while 10% remains in Kodirc’s possession who will continue to operate as Bitstamp’s CEO.
“I want to assure you that Bitstamp remains Bitstamp. We will continue to innovate with the goal of giving our customers the absolute best trading experience. It is business as usual here. We do anticipate that this acquisition will strengthen Bitstamp’s positioning for growth, which will provide opportunities to better serve our customers. Customers should not have any concerns about their accounts or changes to the way we operate”, assures Kodric in his official letter.
Founded in 2011 in a garage in Slovenia with just 1.000 EUR by Nejc Kodric and Damian Merlak, Bitstamp today is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges with headquarters in Luxembourg and more than 3 million registered customers worldwide. To date this startup has raised a total of about $14 million from investors, and according to Reuters‘ estimations the company’s turnover is $100 milion per day.
NXMH on the other hand, is a family investment holding based in Brussels, Belgium with over €2 billion in assets under management, managing the wealth of an Asian tech entrepreneur. According to their LinkedIn profile, NXMH is looking for investments in European consumer and technology companies, with a solid management team, a premium brand and untapped international growth potential. Their focus is on majority buy-outs, but will also consider minority investments.
According to the world know magazine Fortune the negotiation process between Bitstamp and NXMH started in mid of 2017 and the deal was reached in December 2017 when the price of the Bitcoin was near $20.000. However it took almost 11 months for the acquisition to be officially announces as the companies were waiting to receive regulatory approval for the acquisition.
