Popular trading platform eToro has reportedly agreed to acquire Copenhagen-based blockchain firm, Firmo, inorder to accelerate growth of tokenized financial assets.
Trading platform eToro is known for allowing and enabling trading of traditional assets such as Tesla, and amazon stocks; which makes their venture into cryptos quite interesting.
As part of eToro’s acquisition of the Copenhagen-based firm, the former will be bringing on Firmo’s research and development team to help accelerate growth of financial assets on their platform. This was confirmed by eToro in a statement that confirmed an earlier report by Bloomberg. The statement did not however reveal the financial terms of the deal struck between eToro, and Firmo.
According to the co-founder and CEO of eToro Yoni Assia;
“This acquisition is a game changer for eToro as it will help boost our growth in the future tokenized economy,”
Assia went on to add;
“We aim to be active players in blockchain consolidation.”
Firmo brings a lot to the table which explains eToro’s ambition and desire to acquire it. This is because Firmo’s platform can be used to execute financial contracts on multiple blockchains, this allows exchanges to make use of its programming language to create products like crypto derivatives, or build a peer to peer lending service.
The creation of crypto derivatives has great prospects since a lot of crypto enthusiasts are of the belief that tokenized assets are set to launch North in 2019. This speculative belief has indeed led to a lot of entrepreneurs trying to convert all their other holdings including stocks, and property into tradeable digital contracts stored on a digital ledger.
A source who asked to remain anonymous, but quite knowledgeable on the matter said that eToro is actively looking to seal new acquisitions to add on their acquisition of Firmo. An eToro representative however declined to comment on the matter.
Popular firm eToro which was founded 12 years ago runs a social trading platform that has more than 10 million users spread out all over Asia, Europe, and Middle East. The company raised about $162 million in funding, while offering users access to investment assets such as commodities, stocks, and more recently crypto-currencies.
eToro’s metamorphosis from a Tel-Aviv based firm offering access to trading assets, to a firm that acquires an important entity such as Firmo; is quite impressive. It’s also indicative that they are onto something big. They see opportunities in crypto just as much as the other traditional financial institutions that are now circling their wagons around crypto. This to me serves as an indicator that cryptos are on the verge of going main-stream in a big way.
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