The Oldest Exchange Might be Sold for USD 350m – Report

The world’s oldest surviving Bitcoin exchange, Bitstamp, is up for sale, and a South Korean gaming company is close to finalizing a deal to buy it, Business Insider reports, citing people familiar with the matter.

Three people with knowledge of the deal told Business Insider that Bitstamp was in the middle of a sales process, and two of those people named the gaming company Nexon as the likely buyer. The price is said to be around USD 350 million.

Apparently, Bitstamp has already been involved in at least one other sale process before this one.

Responding to Business Insider’s inquiry, a representative for Nexon Japan said, “We can neither confirm nor deny the facts about your inquiry.” Bitstamp similarly replied, “We kindly ask you to keep an eye out for any official statement from our side on the topic of your inquiry.”

Later, Nexon Korea CEO Lee Jung-hun on Wednesday denied rumors that the company is considering the acquisition of Bitstamp, The Korea Herald reported.

According to Bitstamp CEO Nejc Kodrič, Bitstamp has 3 million registered accounts and 500,000 active trading accounts. The exchange is the world’s 10th biggest and had a 24-hour trade volume of USD 447 million as of the time of writing.

Nexon Group specializes in video games, most noteworthy of those being the Korean and Japanese versions of Counter Strike and the Korean version of the soccer game FIFA Online. The company is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange with a market capitalization of 1.3 trillion yen (USD 12.7 billion).