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Leading US cryptocurrency exchange COINBASE is reportedly in talks to purchase BtcTurk, a digital asset trading platform based in Turkey.
In a new report, Turkish publication Webrazzi that Coinbase could purchase BtcTurk at $3.2 billion.
The talks are reportedly at an advanced stage, with the two firms having already signed a term sheet. At over $3 billion, the acquisition is about a tenth of the current market value of the US crypto exchange.
BtcTurk was started in July of 2013 by Kerem Tibuk, according to business database Crunchbase.
Crypto tracking platform CoinMarketCap the Turkish exchange at 70th position, assigning it an exchange score of 4.6 out of ten. Coinbase, on the other hand, is ranked second after BINANCE with an exchange score of 8.3.
BtcTurk only manages a fraction of Coinbase’s trading volumes – approximately $183 million in the past 24 hours against the over $2 billion by the US crypto exchange.
The reports of Coinbase’s efforts to acquire BtcTurk coincides with the US crypto exchange announcing it was recruiting a country director for Turkey who would be responsible for driving business growth.
Less than 12 months ago, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong that the goal of the US crypto exchange was to expand internationally and “grow the reach of crypto, enabling safe and easy to use onramps in every country we can legally operate.”
Earlier this month, Coinbase debuted crypto trading on its platform in India where it was already an investor in two of the country’s biggest digital asset exchanges – CoinDCX and COINSWITCH Kuber.
Earlier this year, Coinbase acquired futures exchange FairX for an undisclosed amount. Coinbase’s other recent acquisition was cryptographic security firm Unbound Security, which was concluded in December of 2021.
