Major US crypto exchange Coinbase is in talks to buy BtcTurk, a Turkey-based digital asset trading platform.
In a new report, Turkish publication Webrazzi says that Coinbase could buy BtcTurk for $3.2 billion.
Negotiations are at an advanced stage and the two companies have already signed a term of commitment. At over $3 billion, the acquisition is about a tenth of the current market capitalization of the US cryptocurrency exchange.
BtcTurk was started in July 2013 by Kerem Tibuk, according to the Crunchbase business database.
Cryptocurrency tracking platform CoinMarketCap ranks the Turkish exchange at position 70, with a score of 4.6 out of ten. Coinbase, on the other hand, is second only to Binance with an exchange score of 8.3.
BtcTurk manages only a fraction of Coinbase’s trading volumes: roughly $183 million in the last 24 hours versus the US crypto exchange’s more than $2 billion.
Reports of Coinbase’s efforts to acquire BtcTurk coincide with the US crypto exchange’s announcement that it was recruiting a country director for Turkey who would be responsible for driving the growth of the business.
Less than 12 months ago, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the US crypto exchange’s goal was to expand internationally and “increase the reach of cryptocurrencies by enabling secure and easy-to-use on-ramps across all markets.” countries in which we can operate”.
Earlier this month, Coinbase debuted cryptocurrency trading on its platform in India, where it was already an investor in two of the country’s largest digital asset exchanges: CoinDCX and CoinSwitch Kuber.
Earlier this year, Coinbase acquired futures exchange FairX for an undisclosed amount. Coinbase’s other recent acquisition was crypto security firm Unbound Security, which was completed in December 2021.
