MoonPay to acquire SEC-registered North Capital in $60 million all-stock deal - CoinDesk

MoonPay has agreed to acquire North Capital, an SEC-registered broker-dealer and transfer agent, in an all-stock deal valued at $60 million, according to CoinDesk. The transaction would bring a regulated US securities entity under the umbrella of a crypto payments firm, a notable step given how few digital-asset companies hold such registrations directly.

The relevance lies in what North Capital's licenses enable. Broker-dealer registration and transfer agent status are core pieces of infrastructure for issuing, clearing, and settling securities — including tokenized versions of traditional assets. Acquiring them outright, rather than partnering, gives MoonPay a regulated pathway into US securities activity without building that capability from scratch.

What to watch: whether the deal clears the necessary regulatory and closing conditions, and how MoonPay integrates the entity alongside its existing payments business. Also worth tracking is whether this reflects a broader trend of crypto firms buying their way into traditional finance registrations rather than seeking approvals organically. The deal's all-stock structure is itself a signal about how such acquisitions are being financed in the current market.