eToro Touts ‘Ambitious’ M&A Plans After Going Public

Trading platform eToro has the cash to let it pursue merger and acquisition deals.

“We’re looking to do more ambitious stuff involving acquisitions,” Ronen Assia, co-founder and executive director of the Israel-based company, said in an interview with Bloomberg News published Sunday (Sept. 7).

This plan includes deals that would let eToro add more asset classes and locales to its platform, added Assia, interviewed at the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy.

The report said eToro had cash and cash equivalents of around $1.2 billion at the end of the first half of the year, with a cash position of $988 million, with no debt.

Unlike rivals like Crypto.com, the company isn’t interested in acquiring prediction markets, which let users place bets on the outcome of scenarios ranging from the winner of next year’s Super Bowl to the outcome of the New York City mayoral election.

“I personally don’t believe prediction markets are a long-term investment tool,” Assia said.

As Bloomberg noted, Ronen and his brother Yoni Assia launched eToro in 2007 as a platform that let users trade and follow top investors in stocks and crypto. The company raised $620 million in its initial public offering (IPO) in May.

Last month, the company announced it was adding tokenization and artificial intelligence tools for retail investors as it works on expanding its product lineup and geographic footprint.

Speaking during an earnings call, Yoni Assia said the company’s latest features “strengthen user engagement and expand our addressable market.”

In other crypto news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the resurgence of blockchains that had once been written off. For example, Solana saw its price plunge 95% by the end of 2022, following the collapse of the FTX exchange.

Still, the report added, the Solana blockchain never really went away, despite the falling prices. Its developers kept building, and now Solana isn’t just active but is being included by the Trump administration in discussions about a U.S. crypto reserve.

“This Lazarus-like return isn’t unique,” PYMNTS wrote. “Algorand, Cardano, BNB Chain and other so-called ‘zombie blockchains’ that once looked destined for the graveyard are suddenly reappearing with renewed relevance. They are no longer framed merely as speculative ‘coins’ but as infrastructure: rails for tokenization, settlement and application development.”

And in an industry known for boom-and-bust cycles, the report added, the resurrection of these networks says less about crypto market prices and more about how the function of blockchain networks themselves are transforming in the broader economy.