Bitpanda x Deutsche Bank

The Deutsche Bank has been catering to the operational needs of Bitpanda as its European partner for cross-currency solutions in Austria and Spain for quite some time. However, that partnership was not consumer-facing. Earlier this week, Bitpanda solidified its ties with the Deutsche Bank and announced that the European lending giant will process real-time fiat deposits and withdrawals for the exchange’s users in Germany.

Tether x XREX Group

USDT stablecoin issuer Tether invested $18.75 million in XREX Group earlier this week. Alongside fostering cross-border B2B payments in USDT, XREX Group will also be working with the Unitas Foundation to put to sea XAU1, a USD-pegged stablecoin that will be over-reserved with Tether Gold [XAUt].

Robinhood x Bitstamp

This was perhaps the most exciting crypto-specific deal of the week. Robinhood announced that it is going to acquire crypto exchange Bitstamp. As far as ambitions are concerned, Rohibhood intends to put to sea new product offerings, targeting new institutional clients. However, this will all take time to materialize. The $200 million all-cash deal is expected to wind up in the first half of 2025. According to Bernstein, this strategic move will position Robinhood well against competitors such as Coinbase and Kraken.

BlackRock x Citadel

The world’s largest asset manager and the American credit union didn’t get into a direct partnership per se, but have both agreed to back the to-be-launched Texas Stock Exchange [TXSE], a deemed NYSE competitor. The exchange has already raised $120 million and intends to soon file registration documents with the SEC. The new exchange is looking to start handling trades in 2025. Likewise, it expects to host its first listing in 2026. Given BlackRock’s association, people from the community have started igniting speculations around asset tokenization. However, no official details regarding the same have been unveiled so far.

Mantra x Ondo

Two of the leading RWA giants are now a part of the same equation. Mantra recently revealed its new RWA savings vault in conjunction with Ondo. The vault will be powered by Ondo’s USDY - a tokenized note secured by short-term US Treasuries and bank deposits. The multi-chain vault - that's set to go live this month on Ethereum and Base - will open the doors for USDC contributors to gain access to treasury yield. Users who remain invested until Mantra's mainnet launch will receive ONDO and OM rewards on top of the underlying yield.

Core Scientific x CoreWeave

Not all deals this week were partnerships. There was one dismissal as well. The Bitcoin mining company ended up rejecting the Nvidia-backed cloud computing firm’s buyout offer. Core Scientific said that the $1 billion unsolicited proposal from CoreWeave undervalues its firm. On the same day, Core Scientific ended up signing a 200-megawatt deal to host CoreWeave's high-performance computing services. The 12-year contracts signed with CoreWeave, are expected to generate over $3.5 billion in aggregate revenue.  

Kaiko x Gemini

Kaiko and Gemini also got into a partnership. The exchange’s derivatives platform now uses Kaiko’s Benchmark Reference Rates to offer users fair market prices. Gemini’s derivatives contracts empower users to leverage and trade a dozen of assets including  BTC, ETH, and SOL. Users’ portfolios are valued in GUSD, Gemini’s native stablecoin.