CoinGecko CEO Bobby Ong confirmed on Thursday that the firm is evaluating “strategic opportunities” amid reports it is seeking to be acquired at a valuation of around $500 million.
“We’re growing, profitable, and seeing increasing demand from institutions as traditional finance embraces crypto,” Ong wrote on LinkedIn. “The crypto industry is maturing fast.”
CoinGecko picked the US investment bank Moelis to advise on the sale, CoinDesk reported on Tuesday.
Moelis is a traditional Wall Street firm that has participated in over $5 trillion in transactions in a wide range of industries. The bank advised Netflix on its $83 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery and also was behind Skydance Media’s successful bid for Paramount Global.
That suggests CoinGecko is marketing the deal to traditional Wall Street institutional investors rather than venture capital players.
“Regulatory clarity is improving,” Ong said. “Institutional adoption continues to pick up momentum.”
“We’ve focused on delivering unbiased, high-quality crypto data that investors, builders, and institutions trust to make informed decisions,” Ong said.
$37 billion M&A boom
The positioning by CoinGecko comes as crypto mergers and acquisitions are soaring. Dealmaking this year is expected to surpass the record $37 billion set in 2025.
Karl-Martin Ahrend, co-founder of crypto M&A advisory Areta, told DL News in January that traditional financial institutions are seeking to acquire digital assets capabilities.
“What you have built with Coingecko is a generational outlier,” Ahrend wrote on LinkedIn on Thursday.
Deal volume in 2025 rose 74% year-on-year to 356 transactions, with 39 transactions topping $100 million and 17 exceeding $500 million, according to a report by Architect Partners.
High-profile deals over $1 billion included Coinbase’s acquisition of Deribit, Kraken’s acquisition of NinjaTrader, Stripe’s purchase of Bridge, and Ripple’s purchase of GTreasury.
And Ahrend expects even more transactions in which fintech firms acquire crypto capabilities rather than build them in-house.
“Even in a risk-off scenario, we would still expect M&A to remain active, because the largest exchanges and a handful of scaled infrastructure players have strong balance sheets and meaningful ‘M&A ammunition,’” Ahrend told DL News.
Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email at lance@dlnews.com.
