Polygon Nears $125M Acquisition of Bitcoin ATM Pioneer Coinme

Polygon is close to buying Coinme, an early U.S. bitcoin ATM kiosk operator, in a deal valued at around US$125 million (AU$191.2 million), according to two people familiar with the matter. 

Coinme activated what it called its first licensed bitcoin ATM on May 1, 2014. The company later expanded its kiosk network to roughly 49 U.S. states and added support for additional crypto tokens at grocery store locations, according to prior reporting cited in the material provided.

For Polygon, the acquisition would be a shift from its core focus on scaling Ethereum toward owning a physical “cash on-ramp” network (places where users can convert cash to crypto without starting on a traditional exchange). 

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A Direct Way To Reach New Users

One person said Polygon is being advised by Architect Partners (though the talks are private and the terms could still change). Moreover, people familiar with the company’s strategy and outside observers describe two potential advantages. 

First, Coinme’s kiosk footprint could give Polygon a direct way to reach new users in person, including people who do not already use centralised exchanges. 

Second, Coinme’s regulatory setup could be valuable: the business operates as a licensed money transmitter in nearly all U.S. states, providing an existing compliance framework that may be difficult to build quickly from scratch.

The deal would also open the door to simpler purchasing flows at the kiosk level, including the possibility of buying Polygon-related tokens directly at physical locations, if Polygon chose to integrate its network and supported assets into Coinme’s distribution.

Polygon is one of the largest Ethereum layer-2 networks, built to reduce fees and improve transaction speed, with products that include Polygon PoS and Polygon zkEVM.

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