Coinsquare today announced the acquisition of StellarX, a decentralized crypto platform.
StellarX is a new global trading platform that launched in July and is built on the Stellar crypto-universal marketplace.
This acquisition comes after BetaKit recently broke the news that Toronto-based Coinsquare had to lay off 27 percent of its staff at the end of January. The cryptocurrency trading platform fired 40 employees including its COO Robert Mueller, CFO Ken Tsang.
“We are deeply committed to ensuring that the cryptocurrency market thrives, and adoption is key.”
At the time, Cole Diamond, Coinsquare’s CEO told BetaKit that the company was not in trouble, pointing to its “incredibly strong balance sheet,” which Diamond said featured $40 million in company funds and assets. Those assets, Diamond noted, are mainly cash, because the company has been “very responsible about the way we allocate our cash.
About today’s StellarX acquisition Diamond said, “We are deeply committed to ensuring that the cryptocurrency market thrives, and adoption is key.” He noted that “Stellar is the fastest payment network in the world and we see enormous potential to create industry-leading services on StellarX to further broader adoption”.”
This is Coinsquare’s third acquisition in as many months. In December it announced the acquisition of BlockEQ, a cryptocurrency wallet running on Stellar for $12 million. Diamond also told BetaKit that the company also acquired blockchain-based loyalty rewards company Tipcoin, best known for its Koi Loyalty product. The CEO also noted at the time that as part of the deal Tipcoin CTO Simon Palmer has now become Coinsquare’s CTO and added 23 net new employees to Coinsquare’s team.
According to Coinsquare, StellarX is the first full-featured trading app for Stellar’s universal marketplace. It’s a decentralized exchange, which means that users retain sole custody of their funds, trades are executed against other users and StellarX has no access to funds.
Megha Bambra the co-founder of BlockEQ will now lead StellarX. “Megha and her new team of Toronto-based developers will continue to build out the product roadmap announced by Stellar last fall,” Coinsquare stated.
Despite the acquisition, StellarX, which is based in Bermuda due to regulatory concerns, will continue to operate under its own brand. Coinsquare noted that the new exchange will “look to apply with the regulators there to become licensed to operate and scale its offering under Coinsquare’s compliance leadership.”