Is US Bitcoin ATM Operator Going Public With $1 Billion Valuation a Loser?

Bitcoin Depot is confident that its plan to go public at a $1 billion valuation through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger deal will be successful. 

In an interview with Fortune, Brandon Mintz, CEO of the company that is currently the biggest operator of crypto ATMs globally, said that Bitcoin Depot’s SPAC merger will not only position it to take over the sector but also consolidate the entire crypto industry. 

Mintz further revealed that Bitcoin Depot intends to build on the momentum it will get from being a publicly traded company by acquiring some of its competition. This merger, he says, will be one of the most significant M&A activities in the crypto industry. 

“It’s a move to allow us to consolidate the industry and be one of the first companies to do that. There has not been any sort of significant M&A activity in the space so far,” he said. 

While the CEO did not reveal which crypto ATM operator Bitcoin Depot has its sights on, Fortune noted that any such merger will be a win for the company as it would further extend its market-leading position among crypto ATM operators.

At present, Bitcoin Depot operates more than 20% of around 30,000 crypto ATMs in the U.S. according to an investor presentation it published in August. Coin Cloud, the closest rival of Bitcoin Depot, controls around 1500 fewer Bitcoin ATM kiosks than it.  

Doubts persist about the success of the Bitcoin Depot SPAC merger 

Despite the CEO’s confidence in Bitcoin Depot using an influx of cash from its public listing to finance further mergers, industry observers have remained skeptical of the plan. 

For one, the SPAC merger with GSR II Meteora Acquisition Corp., which was announced in August and has a completion timeline that reaches early 2023, has been called out by analysts. Jae Yang, the CEO of decentralized crypto exchange Tacen, said the potential SPAC valuation of nearly a billion dollars seems unusually high, especially when taking into account the decade-old industry and some of the numbers from the company’s investor presentation. 

Others have noted that an unusually high percentage of SPAC deals have failed to meet expectations. Earlier this year, Renaissance Capital noted in a report that among the 199 companies that went public via a SPAC within 2021, only about one in 10 had been trading above its asking price.