{"id":12081,"date":"2026-01-13T23:47:33","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T23:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=12081"},"modified":"2026-01-13T23:47:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T23:47:33","slug":"polygon-labs-buys-two-crypto-startups-for-250-million-as-it-looks-to-compete-with-stripe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=12081","title":{"rendered":"Polygon Labs buys two crypto startups for $250 million as it looks to compete with Stripe"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The blockchain developer Polygon Labs has closed deals to buy the crypto startups Coinme and Sequence. The total purchase price for the two startups was for more than $250 million, but Polygon Labs declined to disclose how much it paid for each, or whether the deals were for cash, equity, or a mix of both.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The acquisitions are meant to aid the blockchain network\u2019s stablecoin strategy, said Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron and Polygon Foundation founder Sandeep Nailwal in an interview. The Seattle-based Coinme, which specializes in converting cash into crypto and is known for its work with crypto ATMs, has a suite of money transmitter licenses in the U.S. Meanwhile, New York-based Sequence builds out blockchain infrastructure, including crypto wallets.<\/p>\n

Polygon Labs\u2019 acquisitions of the two startups puts it in competition with the fintech giant Stripe, said Nailwal. Over the past year, the payments giant bought a stablecoin startup, a crypto wallet firm, and backed its own blockchain focused on payments. The Stripe acquisitions signalled an intention to own every layer of the stablecoin stack, from the servers that process payments to the accounts where users hold crypto.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a reverse Stripe in a way,\u201d Nailwal said of Polygon\u2019s stablecoin play. Stripe first acquired its stablecoin startups and then built out its own blockchain. In contrast, Polygon already has a longstanding network of blockchains, and it\u2019s bringing on startups to build on top of it. \u201cPolygon Labs is becoming a full-blown fintech company,\u201d said Nailwal.<\/p>\n

Stablecoin shift<\/h2>\n

The push from Polygon Labs into payments comes amid a wave of hype for stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies that are pegged to real-world assets like the U.S. dollar. Especially after President Donald Trump signed into law in July a new bill regulating the tokens, fintechs, tech companies, and even banks have said they\u2019ll launch their own stablecoins, which proponents say are an upgrade over decades-old financial infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Polygon Labs, whose blockchain network sits on top of Ethereum, is aiming to ride this wave of enthusiasm. Best known for its prominence during the NFT boom of 2021 and 2022, Polygon has made significant investments in payments over the past year, even poaching Stripe\u2019s head of crypto, John Egan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The deal for Coinme, its latest payments play, was for between $100 and $125 million, reported CoinDesk<\/em>, which implies that the price for\u00a0 Sequence was somewhere between $125 and $150 million. But Boiron, the CEO of Polygon Labs, pushed back on the reporting. \u201cAlmost everything that CoinDesk<\/em> wrote in that article is wrong,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He also said he wasn\u2019t worried about Coinme\u2019s legal struggles. In 2025, regulators in California and Washington targeted the crypto company for violations that included a failure to stop customers from taking out more than $1,000 in a day from the firm\u2019s affiliated crypto ATMs. Washington regulators agreed to stay a cease-and-desist order against Coinme a month after going after the startup.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they go far beyond what is required,\u201d said Boiron, in reference to Coinme\u2019s compliance regime. \u201cOn the back end, the way that they handle being able to limit risk to users, I think is state of the art.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

#Polygon #Labs #buys #crypto #startups #million #compete #Stripe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The blockchain developer Polyg… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[1211,1600,7648,1227,1094,781,576,913,8675,2750,8175],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12081"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}