The crypto giants are not betting on the track, but on "I can survive no matter the outcome."

Written by: David Christopher

Translated by: Saoirse, Foresight News

This month, three cryptocurrency companies filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, with two exchanges announcing they would soon cease operations. At the same time, as the industry faced consecutive setbacks, MoonPay, Circle, and Kraken announced or implemented trading expansions, intensifying their investments in core business infrastructure.

There is a common rule in mature tech industries: infrastructure gradually becomes homogeneous and commoditized, leading capital to flow toward business integration. The crypto industry follows this trend, but with an additional variable: the industry landscape remains unresolved. No one can be sure which platform will ultimately dominate trading, which public chain can handle the most value settlement, or which dollar stablecoin will become the market standard.

This has fundamentally changed the underlying purpose of acquisitions in the crypto sector. In mature markets, integration is aimed at increasing profit margins; in the crypto industry, integration is intended so that no matter who wins the future trading channels, underlying public chains, or mainstream stablecoins, the companies can continue to exist. The differences in acquisition logic among the three companies fundamentally stem from their varying degrees of reliance on these three major industry-ending issues.

MoonPay: No need to bet on track outcomes

MoonPay is at the junction of traditional financial systems and on-chain economies. The vast majority of crypto applications require tools to complete two-way exchanges between bank balances and on-chain assets, while MoonPay's business model is not tied to any specific public chain and does not rely on any particular stablecoin for mainstream adoption.

On July 16, MoonPay acquired Glide, marking its sixth acquisition this year, continuing its consistent development approach. Glide enables various applications to receive funds from most tokens, wallets, exchanges, and bank cards, automatically facilitating token exchanges and cross-chain operations to deliver the assets users need. Prior to this, MoonPay had already enhanced its capabilities through multiple acquisitions, covering areas such as private key management, transaction execution, AI quantitative trading, and financial reconciliation. In the past, MoonPay only managed the entry and exit of fiat currency into the crypto world; now, regardless of which platform users trade on, the entire process of fund transfer, transaction settlement, account reconciliation, and withdrawals involves MoonPay.

Polygon can serve as a stark contrast. In January this year, Polygon spent over $250 million to acquire Coinme and Sequence, adding compliance licenses, wallets, and fiat deposit and withdrawal capabilities to its "open currency system." While both companies are laying out similar business modules, Polygon's profit maximization is built on a significant amount of value being deposited on the Polygon public chain; on the other hand, MoonPay's earnings follow user flows and are not restricted by public chains.

Circle: Must maintain USDC's mainstream status

Circle’s revenue heavily depends on the single asset USDC, and the emergence of OUSD has put Circle directly under profit pressure.

The Open Standard Alliance includes over 140 companies, such as Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, and Coinbase. The alliance's rules allow partners to mint and redeem OUSD for free; partner institutions can retain most of the interest generated from reserve assets after deducting a small management fee. On the day the news broke, Circle's parent company CRCL saw its share price drop by about 16%. Reserve interest is Circle's core source of income. Even if USDC's issuance remains stable, if Circle has to give away more interest to exchanges and wallet providers to ensure continued support for USDC's circulation, the company's profit margins will still be pressured.

The recent patent acquisition announced by Circle is a response to this competition. Circle has acquired nearly a thousand approved patents from IBM's blockchain patent portfolio, covering various fields, including banking, insurance, enterprise infrastructure, and secure cloud services. Circle states that these patents will empower USDC, the Circle payment network, the Arc platform, and smart financial tools, though more details were not disclosed.

If revenue sharing becomes the norm in the stablecoin industry, the industry interest margins will generally narrow, and the core basis for users choosing stablecoins will no longer just be interest income, but the accompanying ecosystem: settling links between banks and enterprise systems, financial management tools for corporate funds, and complete traceability capabilities that meet audit requirements. Compared to merely competing over interest, the competition at the infrastructure level will have a lasting competitive edge.

Kraken: Striving to become a comprehensive mainstream trading terminal

Coinbase, Robinhood, and Kraken are all racing to create all-in-one accounts, allowing users to trade a full range of assets within one account: crypto spot, on-chain assets, stocks, derivatives, payment products, and tokenized securities. At the same time, each is building its own on-chain trading ecology based on Base Public Chain, Robinhood Chain, and Ink Public Chain, aiming to integrate on-chain and off-chain markets for a unified trading experience.

Kraken's parent company Payward recently finalized an acquisition agreement to acquire Magic Labs' wallet-as-a-service business, with infrastructure provided by Magic Labs for applications like Polymarket's embedded wallets. Currently, Kraken users do not need to create separate wallets to trade on-chain tokens; the platform's tokenized stock product xStocks has surpassed a cumulative transaction volume of $350 billion; Kraken also operates the Ethereum Layer 2 network Ink, although this public chain has not yet achieved widespread adoption.

After acquiring Magic Labs, Kraken can deeply embed wallet functions into its products. Users can perform on-chain operations without repeatedly switching to third-party wallets, accessing the on-chain market within the existing app. The Ethereum Layer 2 network Ink can also leverage this infrastructural foundation for more convenient connections to Kraken's existing vast user channels.

Recent industry dynamics have confirmed that exchanges building their own on-chain trading tracks are still full of uncertainties. The Robinhood Chain launched on July 1, and three weeks later its daily active user count surpassed that of Base, with early traffic primarily from meme coin trading; today, its tokenized stock trading is also beginning to scale. Although Base still looks stronger based on liquidity, supply of stablecoins, and other hard indicators, Robinhood's rapid rise proves that traditional brokerages can rapidly create new on-chain trading grounds by leveraging their own user channels.

This month, the motivations for the bankruptcy and shutdown of multiple crypto companies vary, but all point to a reshuffling of the industry landscape. On the other hand, large platforms are continuously acquiring various technical capabilities, enhancing current product competitiveness while betting on multiple future possibilities for the industry.

As the barriers to obtaining underlying infrastructure continue to lower, the key to victory in industry competition will rest on the smoothness of product integration and the scale of the ecological network. Although the crypto industry is maturing, there remains ample competitive space across various tracks.