The South Korean internet giant is reportedly in talks to acquire the parent company of the country’s top crypto exchange.
South Korea’s largest internet search company, Naver, is in advanced talks to acquire Dunamu Inc., the operator of cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, through a stock-swap deal that would place Dunamu under Naver’s finance arm, according to local reports.
Under the proposed share-exchange plan, Naver Financial would issue shares to Dunamu shareholders rather than pay cash, though the timeline of the deal remains undisclosed. The structure would make Dunamu a wholly owned subsidiary of Naver Financial.
As of press time, Naver and Dunamu haven’t filed definitive public confirmations of final terms, Donga reports. Dunamu and Naver did not immediately respond to The Defiant’s request for comment.
Stablecoin Ambitions
Naver is South Korea’s largest internet platform, with over 30 million users of its mobile payment service Naver Pay and annual revenue exceeding 11 trillion won ($8 billion).
For the tech giant, the acquisition would be another step toward building a Korean stablecoin empire, as in July, Korean media reported that Naver and Upbit were working together on a stablecoin product, with Naver Pay leading the effort.
Upbit remains the dominant player in the domestic cryptocurrency market. In its Q3 ranking of crypto exchanges, blockchain analytics firm Kaiko ranked Upbit as the world’s eighth-largest crypto platform, behind only international players such as Binance and Crypto.com.
As The Defiant reported earlier, Upbit is also working on its own native Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain, dubbed GIWA, or Global Infrastructure for Web3 Access, leveraging the Optimism (OP) stack.
In the future, GIWA plans to provide a beginner-friendly interface that allows users to interact on-chain without needing to understand concepts such as different blockchains, tokenization, or gas fees.
Source: https://thedefiant.io/news/cefi/naver-to-acquire-crypto-exchange-upbit-report