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Galaxy Buys Almost All of CryptoManufaktur's Assets, Expanding Ethereum Staking Portfolio
The acquisition by publicly traded Galaxy Digital, led by Michael Novogratz, will expand the firm's role in Ethereum staking, as part of a broader effort to push deeper into the business of blockchain infrastructure.
Galaxy Digital, the publicly traded crypto firm led by Michael Novogratz, has acquired substantially all the assets of blockchain node operator CryptoManufaktur LLC, in a deal that will grow the company's Ethereum staking capabilities.
The agreement with CryptoManufaktur, known as CMF, was announced in a press release provided exclusively to CoinDesk. Terms weren't disclosed.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
According to a spokesperson, Galaxy is acquiring the operations and engineering teams and the assets that come with those, increasing the company's serviced assets under stake by about 43%.
CMF founder Thorsten Behrens, as part of a three-person engineering team, will join Galaxy's blockchain infrastructure team, which provides staking and blockchain validator services to qualified investors, protocols and digital-asset platforms, according to the press release.
CMF, started in 2020, was originally launched to build infrastructure for the blockchain oracle project Chainlink, and later expanded into running automated proof-of-stake node deployment infrastructure on Ethereum. The deal comes with about $1 billion of Ethereum assets under stake, raising Galaxy's total to $3.3 billion.
Galaxy has been expanding into blockchain infrastructure, adding to its primary business lines of crypto trading and investment management. Novogratz is a closely followed figure in crypto and on business TV networks like CNBC, partly because of his deep background on Wall Street, he was as an executive at Goldman Sachs, and hedge fund Fortress Investment Group.
“Galaxy is rapidly expanding its blockchain infrastructure and staking capabilities and capacity to provide enterprise-grade technical expertise and support to strategic corners of the digital-asset ecosystem," Zane Glauber, head of Galaxy’s blockchain infrastructure team, said in the release. "Our acquisition of CMF is an important milestone that significantly enhances our position as a leading technical partner to protocols and builders.”
Bradley Keoun
Bradley Keoun is CoinDesk's managing editor of tech & protocols, where he oversees a team of reporters covering blockchain technology, and previously ran the global crypto markets team. A two-time Loeb Awards finalist, he previously was chief global finance and economic correspondent for TheStreet and before that worked as an editor and reporter for Bloomberg News in New York and Mexico City, reporting on Wall Street, emerging markets and the energy industry. He started out as a police-beat reporter for the Gainesville Sun in Florida and later worked as a general-assignment reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana, he double-majored in electrical engineering and classical studies as an undergraduate at Duke University and later obtained a master's in journalism from the University of Florida. He is currently based in Austin, Texas, and in his spare time plays guitar, sings in a choir and hikes in the Texas Hill Country. He owns less than $1,000 each of several cryptocurrencies.
