Circle is a platform for mobile payments and on Monday it announced the acquisition of Poloniex, one of the most important cryptocurrency exchanges based in the United States of America. With this new expansion, Circle is going back to its beginnings when the company was dedicated to the bitcoin trading.
Poloniex announced the acquisition on its official blog, simultaneously with the Circle’s announcement, but no economic details of the acquisition were mentioned. Circle points out that Poloniex will join its three principal units, Circle Pay, Circle Trade and Circle Investing. Poloniex will form a new branch of the Circle’s activities related to a global market of tokens, as announced by Circle.
The co-founders of Circle, Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville, who signed the announcements of the acquisition of Poloniex, pointed out that the cryptocurrency exchange operates in more than 100 countries around the world and was a pioneer in offering significant liquidity in Ethereum and also the first cryptocurrency exchange to reach the daily trading volume of one billion dollars. The announcement says: “The clients have traded cryptocurrencies worth billions of dollars using the Poloniex platform.”
Poloniex admits that its rapid growth since the beginning in 2014 caused certain operational problems and that is why the Circle’s experience will be used to improve the scalability and trust in the Poloniex platform. In December, 2016, Circle decided to shift its focus to the platform for mobile payments based on the blockchain technology.
Poloniex says: “The user experience is the most important. If we would like to create a market for trading tokens that redefines the foundations of the global exchange of value, we cannot be satisfied with anything less than the excellence of our product.”
According to Poloniex, the three goals of this acquisition are: working with Circle to expand its operations to more countries, explore options to connect with fiat money beyond the US dollar and the euro and continue offering other tokens that enrich the blockchain ecosystem by inventing other uses for the cryptocurrencies.
Marieke Flament, the director of Circle Europe, gave an interview in November, 2016, in which she explained the company was working to create the WhatsApp or Google of the money. She predicted that Circle would be present in many countries around the world, which is now possible after the acquisition of Poloniex.
