- Ripple buys Bitstamps stake from Pantera, becoming the largest shareholder.
- Pantera was advised to sell to Ripple by Galaxy Digital.
- Bitstamp is the second and third-largest trading market for XRP.
- Bitstamp was acquired in a cash deal in 2014 and was valued at $60 million at the time of its sale.
Ripple has acquired Pantera’s shares, and the company was one of the largest shareholders in Bitstamp until 2014 when the exchange got accepted by a Belgium-based firm NXMH.
Ripple, a blockchain-based digital payment network, had taken a minority stake in crypto exchange Bitstamp for the first quarter of 2023, with digital investment firm Galaxy Digital being the advisor on the deal, according to a report that was shared on the 9th of May of a Galaxy Shareholders conference call.
Ripple gained control of shares previously owned by Pantera Capital, a digital advertising firm based in the United States. The firm was once one of the largest shareholders in Bitstamp until the investment firm got acquired in a cash deal, which was valued at $60 million at the time of acquisition.
Pantera made a $10-million investment in the company in 2014 and sold part of its stake in Bitstamp to investment firm NXMX. Galaxy’s President and Chief information officer, in his report, said his team advised Pantera, a leading blockchain asset management company, on the sales of their stake in Bitstamp to blockchain-based digital payment network Ripple, in quarter 1 of 2023 while speaking on their global market business lately.
There are no specific reports on how much Ripple paid to acquire Pantera’s shares or how the deal was structured, and Ripple has not responded to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.
Launched in 2011, Bitstamp was one of the first crypto exchanges to have an offering for digital assets transactions, and the company also provided its services to clients in over 100 countries from their home base in Belgium, according to data from CoinMarketCap; Bitstamp is currently ranked among the top 10 crypto exchanges in trading volume with a whopping $164 million worth of tokens traded in the past few hours.
The history between Ripple and Bitstamp goes far back, with Bitstamp previously serving as a getaway for Ripple’s XRP tokens. It is also not a shocking fact that XRP pairs hold the position of the second and third most traded tokens on Bitstamp.
Bitstamp is also known as the second-largest trader of XRP after Binance. Since 2020, Ripple has been knee-deep in an expensive lawsuit with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission on whether XRP is a security.
Conclusion
The most recent development on the lawsuit has been a move from the U.S. securities regulator to seal any records involving the case being denied, and this move by the court has counted as a win for Ripple, with the belief that some of the internal Securities and Exchange Commission speeches available are significant evidence in their ongoing lawsuit.
