Rakuten acquires IP and assets of Bitnet, a Bitcoin wallet startup it had invested in, for undisclosed sum, and will open a blockchain R&D lab in Belfast, UK
Rakuten has confirmed that it has acquired the assets of Bitnet, a bitcoin wallet startup it invested in …
Context & Ripple Effects
In March 2015, Rakuten said it would put its Bitnet investment to work by accepting bitcoin across its global marketplace through the startup's wallet technology. Eighteen months later it has stopped renting that capability and bought it outright, acquiring Bitnet's IP and assets while opening a blockchain R&D lab in Belfast where the startup was based.
For Bitnet's backers this is a quasi-exit — an acquisition by an existing strategic investor rather than an independent sale — and it converts a vendor relationship into in-house infrastructure. The move foreshadows what came next: Rakuten later rolled its $9B loyalty program into the blockchain-based Rakuten Coin and launched its own crypto exchange.
First-order effects
- Bitnet ceases to exist as an independent company; its wallet IP and team fold into Rakuten, which gains direct control of the payment rails behind its 2015 bitcoin-acceptance plan instead of depending on a startup it merely funded.
- Rakuten's new Belfast R&D lab gives it a dedicated blockchain engineering base in Northern Ireland, anchored by the team it just absorbed.
Second-order effects
- Owning the wallet stack removes the licensing middleman from Rakuten's checkout flow, letting it bundle bitcoin payments into its own commerce and loyalty economics rather than paying per-transaction fees to a third party.
- Other large merchants that partnered with bitcoin-wallet startups face the same build-vs-buy decision, pressuring those startups toward acquisition by their biggest customers as the likely endgame.
Third-order effects
- The pattern here — corporate investor absorbs its portfolio startup's assets once the technology proves strategically central — points to strategic investors becoming the default exit path for payments infrastructure startups.
- Rakuten's later trajectory, from launching a no-fee crypto exchange to raising ~$1.9B amid mobile losses and shutting its US retail store, suggests the in-house crypto build-out ultimately had to justify itself against the group's broader capital pressures — a test many corporate blockchain labs did not pass.
The trend: Large e-commerce groups are internalizing cryptocurrency infrastructure by acquiring the wallet startups they first invested in, turning speculative partnerships into owned payment rails.