Robinhood Scoops Up Exchange ‘Ziglu’ at 60% Discount

Robinhood has successfully slashed its offer to acquire London-based cryptocurrency exchange Ziglu. The price of the deal went from US$170 million to US$72.5 million, a whopping 60 percent less than the original price tag, due to market conditions.

The initial deal was made in April 2022 and the purchase marked a step in Robinhood’s plan to scale its digital assets presence in international markets. Ziglu founder and CEO Mark Hipperson reportedly accepted the offer on August 18.

Commenting on the acquisition, a Robinhood spokesperson said in a blog post:

With Ziglu, UK-based customers can buy and sell 11 cryptocurrencies, earn yield via its ‘Boost’ products, pay using a debit card, and move and spend money, even abroad, without fees.

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Robinhood blog post

Robinhood is now in a position to expand its operations at a much lower cost, but crowdfunding investors who purchased shares on UK-based equity platform Seedrs have lost out on this deal. Ziglu crowdfunded on Seedrs in 2020 and 2021, raising US$15 million at the time.

Hipperson justified the downgrade, citing market conditions triggered by troubled crypto lenders Celsius, BlockFi and Voyager. Ziglu is listed as one of the top 50 unsecured creditors of Celsius, which could be locked indefinitely as it is quickly running out of money and has been operating at a multibillion-dollar deficit as it undergoes bankruptcy proceedings.

Robinhood Continues Expansion

Along with acquiring Ziglu, Robinhood announced a Web3 non-custodial wallet in May to rival MetaMask. The wallet will give its customer access to NFTs, decentralised exchanges and swap tokens through a new interface. A month earlier, Robinhood also unveiled plans to support Lightning payments for its two million users.