Major crypto exchange Binance is also the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume. Over the years it has made immense progress and has grown to be one of the biggest names in the crypto industry. It is also one of the cleanest exchanges in the market. In less than 3 years’ time, Binance has made its way to the top by making some innovative decisions and a series of acquisitions that has further boosted the organization’s foothold in the industry.

Binance has made a number of acquisitions over the past months and is now close to acquiring popular crypto data provider CoinMarketCap, as reported by media outlet The Block. As per the report, the deal is in its final stages and the exchange is set to pay as much as $400 million to acquire the platform.

The deal would be a cash-and-stock deal, and the official announcement is expected to surface this week itself. This deal would also be one of the biggest deals in the crypto space right next to other major acquisitions in this space. For instance, Circle acquired crypto exchange Poloniex last year for a whopping $400 million back in 2018, while popular exchange Coinbase acquired Earn.com for $120 million.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao had previously said that the exchange is set to make some strategic acquisitions in 2020. This new deal could be one of those talked about deals. In a letter to the community, Zhao had said:

“We always have a number of strategic acquisition discussions in the works, a couple of them are major and will have a significant impact. We will announce it in due time.”

According to people familiar with the matter, the primary reason why Binance could be acquiring the crypto data aggregator must be traffic. CoinMarketCap has drawn close to 208 million visitors over the past six months, according to data from SimilarWeb. In comparison, Binance has drawn only 113.8 million at the same time. The data provider’s traffic is 80% more than that of the exchange.

Bringing crypto to the masses

Binance still remains the most visited crypto exchange and is accountable for 22% of all traffic amongst crypto exchanges. This acquisition would give the platform more exposure with all the additional traffic and help the organization with its goal of bringing crypto to the masses. Binance made nine acquisitions in 2019, with “only a small number of them being publicly announced so far,” CZ had said.

The latest acquisition comes right after Binance became the first international crypto-exchange to enter the Indian market, with its acquisition of popular Indian peer-to-peer exchange WazirX last year. The exchange had shown faith in the Indian crypto market way before the nation’s ban on crypto was lifted. This gave the exchange a head start as since then many new crypto-companies have set foot in the market.

The exchange made its first public acquisition back in 2018 when it acquired Trust Wallet with a combination of fiat money, Binance stocks, and its native cryptocurrency Binance Coin (BNB).