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Coinbase once offered $2.5 billion to acquire BVNK, ultimately losing to Mastercard's $1.8 billion acquisition

The insider information about the acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK by Mastercard for $1.8 billion has recently been revealed. BVNK's early investment firm Concentric disclosed that during the acquisition bidding process, the U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase once held an advantage and reportedly made a top bid of $2.5 billion, but ultimately withdrew from the competition due to insufficient strategic and cultural fit between the two parties.Kjartan Rist, founding partner of Concentric, stated that the founding team of BVNK did not only focus on the bid amount when choosing an acquirer, but placed more importance on long-term partnerships and cultural alignment. "Although Coinbase may have offered a higher price, the chemistry between the two parties was not ideal." In contrast, Mastercard, as a traditional financial services company, found it easier to form synergies with BVNK in the areas of payment infrastructure and stablecoin applications.It is reported that Mastercard was involved in the acquisition discussions for BVNK early on, and after Coinbase failed to advance the deal, Mastercard re-emerged as the primary buyer, ultimately completing the acquisition for $1.8 billion.Visa also participated in the competition. Having previously invested in BVNK and holding a board observer seat, Visa once had an advantage. However, Visa ultimately chose not to pursue a direct acquisition, opting instead for an open strategy of collaborating with multiple stablecoin companies.BVNK was founded in 2018 and primarily provides stablecoin payment, cross-border settlement, and fund management infrastructure for enterprises. Its early investor Concentric invested in the company at a valuation of $4 million in 2019, and this transaction has resulted in significant returns.

Analysis: The ZetaChain vulnerability was reported in advance by white hats but was ignored, ultimately leading to a $334,000 attack incident

According to Cointelegraph, the cross-chain protocol ZetaChain disclosed that the security issues involved in its recent approximately $334,000 vulnerability attack event had been reported in advance by researchers in the bug bounty program but were deemed "expected behavior" by the project team at that time and were not addressed.According to the official incident review, this attack originated from a combination of three design flaws that initially appeared to be independent and low-risk: the Gateway contract allowed anyone to send any cross-chain instructions; the receiving end could execute calls on almost any contract, and the blacklist restrictions were too narrow; some wallets retained unlimited approvals for a long time without being cleared. The attacker ultimately combined these flaws to instruct the Gateway to transfer tokens directly to their controlled address, thus completing the asset transfer.ZetaChain stated that this attack involved 9 transactions across four chains: Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, and BSC, with the stolen funds all coming from wallets controlled by ZetaChain, and user funds were not affected. The official noted that the attack showed clear premeditation. The attacker funded the wallet through Tornado Cash three days before the attack and deployed a dedicated Drainer contract in advance, while also implementing an Address Poisoning attack.Currently, ZetaChain has begun pushing repair patches to the mainnet nodes, permanently disabling the arbitrary call function and changing the unlimited approval mechanism in the deposit process to "exact amount authorization."

CZ's new book reveals: During the 9·4 period, the silence of venture capital left him disappointed, and Sequoia ultimately backed out due to a breakdown in valuation talks

Binance founder Zhao Changpeng (CZ) recalled in his new book that after the "9·4" regulatory policy was introduced in 2017, venture capital firms as a whole became more cautious, and Sequoia Capital, which had originally expressed investment intentions, also paused related cooperation. He stated, "Seeing the venture capitalists collectively silent during our most difficult September, I was actually quite disappointed."CZ revealed that prior to this, Sequoia had expressed investment interest at the beginning of He Yi's joining, but chose to wait and see in light of the policy impact. Subsequently, Binance achieved rapid growth from September to October, with the number of users increasing from about 20,000 in August to about 120,000 by late October, ranking among the top ten exchanges globally and becoming profitable.CZ stated that by the end of October, after the risk phase had basically passed, Sequoia re-expressed its investment intentions, but they had proposed to raise the valuation requirement. Ultimately, the two sides could not reach an agreement due to valuation differences. The other party then proposed to pursue legal proceedings, and a week later, four large boxes of legal documents were delivered. CZ said this was the "first time in his life becoming a defendant." CZ mentioned that he later learned that the lawsuit was led by Sequoia's legal team in the U.S., who are skilled at using the media to create public opinion, "the media reporters knew before I, the party involved."
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