Bitstamp confirms sale of its majority stake in South Korean group | CryptoNews



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Bitstamp, one of the most important cryptocurrency exchange centers in Europe, has been sold to the Brussels-based NXMH investment company. This was reported by its executive director, Nejc Kodrič, on Monday, October 29, via the company's website.

Although Kodrič did not disclose the details of the operation, specialized media such as Reuter and Fortune pointed out that it was a problem. total cash negotiation, for an amount close to $ 400 million. The signing of the sales contract was finalized on Thursday, October 25th.

The trading house, based in Luxembourg, was founded in 2011 and has an important track record on the bitcoin exchange market. In 2016, it reached a value of 60 million dollars. Currently, his daily business figure is about 100 million dollars.

The buyer, NXMH, is the European subsidiary of NXC Corp., a South Korean investment firm that invests in several sectors, including digital technologies. The company owns the Korbit cryptocurrency exchange, based in South Korea. However, no merger between the two cryptographic bags is planned.

According to the official statement, the sale is the next logical step in the growth of Bitstamp and its mission, vision and leadership remain intact. In this sense, Kodrič emphasized that the quality of the comparator and its offer was an important factor in the closing of the operation.

Kodrič said that he remains the CEO of Bitstamp and that he does not expect changes for customers or company staff, calculated on 180 employees. "We have the same opinion as NXMH: why change something if it works perfectly?", He told Fortune.

He also said that there was no active effort to search for buyers, Bitstamp having been approached regularly by interested investors. "We started being contacted by buyers in the middle of last year," he said. In total, they received offers from four possible partners.

Thanks to this agreement, NXMH acquires 80% of Bitstmap's shares and Kodrič reduces its stake to 10%. Other investors, such as Damian Merlak, co-founder of Bitstamp, sold all of his 30% stake in this deal. For its part, Pantera Capital, a company that invested $ 10 million in Birtstamp in 2014, also sold part of its Cryptobolsa stock to NXMH.

Kodrič said that, together with Merlak, they had created Bitstamp in a garage in Slovenia, with two laptops and 1,000 euros of initial capital. In April 2016, they became the first cryptocurrency exchange house to receive the go operate freely as a payment entity in the 28 states of the European Union. Today, it has more than 3 million registered customers.

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